Back in 2001, Daft Punk had it down. We want everything better than yesterday and faster than ever before. With the rise and repeated rise of the digital landscape we want answers immediately, we are constantly searching and asking questions.

Step in Live Chat.

Customers can chat to a representative of your company right there on your website to get instant answers before making a purchase. People are making less calls to each other and using messenger services more to the extent 34 BILLION WhatsApps are sent daily.

It is also more convenient to the user. We are also in the age of convenience where we hate being stuck on hold and would rather be alerted when our queries have been answered. And wince Wi-Fi is everywhere now, people can have better data than phone signal, making chat options easier than calls. This also works for the business owner. Your chat agents can help multiple people at the same time, increasing productivity and sales!

In our multicultural world, Live Chat also breaks down the language barrier should there be one where the customer and operator do not speak the same first language. You can also send helpful links to the customer, directing them exactly where to go when they’re stuck on your website.

But what happens when the office is closed?

It’s unrealistic, especially for the small business owner, to be on hand 24/7. Adding Live Chat to your website will give the impression you are always there to help. If there are no agents online to help, your customers can leave frustrated and disappointed. If you add a chat service to your website, make sure to add auto replies when offline. These can include a link to your help centre, advise of staffed hours or give them the chance to leave a question and email address for their question to be answered as soon as your team are back online. Always give your customers some options so they don’t feel ignored. We all hate being ignored!

There are so many options now to go ahead with your Live Chat services which range dramatically in cost and features. Some popular ones available are LiveChat, Zendesk and our favourite Intercom.

Not sure if it’s for your company’s website? Have a look at some businesses who use it and interact with them. Hey, while you’re here, say hi to us on our Live Chat!

To get started with your first website, get in touch! We're here to help you every step of the way. 

You’ve taken the plunge to build your own website (excellent decision, might I add) and the first step is to choose your theme. This is probably the hardest decision you’ll have to make outright with a lot of factors to consider when asking what do you want your website to look like?

Full width images or boxed width?

Multiple pages or anchored scrolling?

E-commerce facilities?

Does your site need to be responsive?

Where does the menu bar go?

Adverts? Yes? No? How many?

Should I have whitespace or blackspace?

How much text is too much for the homepage?

Pretty overwhelming but the biggest question is how much time and effort can you put in? Let’s have a look at the above in more detail.

Full width images or boxed width?

The boxed width is used by a lot of professions creating clean lines on the images. This also allows content to stay pretty much the same when flipping between mobile/desktop and other screen resolutions. Check out Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The full width images are becoming more popular, giving an impression that the site can has no boundaries, popular with creative designs and clothing stores (ASOS is a classic example). Just make sure the edges of the images aren’t the most important parts if they may be cut off.

Multiple pages or anchored scrolling?

This will depend a great deal on the nature of your site. Do you have a lot of content or is your website to have a few great images, contact details and a bit of blurb?

For SEO purposes and natural ranking, we would suggest multiple pages. Or an anchored home page with a link to your blog. The more content you produce, the more search terms are available on your site for you to organically climb up the ranks when users are searching for businesses like yours.

Check out our Tour page for an (awesome) example of an anchored scroll page.

Ecommerce Facilities

This will of course depend on whether you have something to sell. Clothes, crafts, merchandise, gig tickets, prints… pretty much anything that can be shipped you can put onto your online store. Ensuring the order process is as seamless as possible is key, with too many steps and fiddly options customers can get bored and drop off thinking “I’ll do it later” only never to return!

Does your site need to be responsive?

This is just a big fat yes. A responsive website will alter its appearance to suit the user’s device, orientation and behaviour. Content can be resized or moved to suit the viewing platform without compromising on the aesthetics. No one likes having to zoom in to the desktop version of a site on a mobile, so all Kommand sites are responsive. Yay!

Where does the menu bar go?

Top, bottom, left, right, you can choose where it goes. Is it however, almost always at the top as this helps direct users to the content they are looking for without scrolling. Though the other popular option is to have this below a featured image, especially as we take a more visual approach to web design. To further minimalise the menu bar, you can go for a drop-down option and further still a Hamburger drop-down.

Adverts? Yes? No? How many?

We’re not talking about selling off space on your site to get some cash in, but the rotating ads, banners, image slideshows to advertise yourself! These can be used to promote new products or push users to key parts of your site with a CTA button. Don’t overdo it with the rotating ads, these can either switch too quick for users to register the content or they will navigate elsewhere before seeing them all.

Should I have whitespace or blackspace?

This will depend on the nature of your site and industry. Whitespace tends to be the most popular and easier to read, just take a look at some of your favourite sites. If you want to escape from the norm and use a black or colour space instead, think about the text colour too. White text on a black background can be difficult to read in paragraphs as the light reflects and scatters into other words. Try a grey or tinted text.

However, when users are scanning text such as headings or logos, white text on a dark background can appear more vibrant and grab attention as scanning does not put stress on the user’s eyes.

How much text is too much for the homepage?

Let’s face it, in today’s age we’ve become a little lazy. Faced with reading a full article or a condensed overview, we’ll go for the condensed option. Then if it interested us enough, go on to read the full article. This works with your web pages. If a user can’t easily find what they’re looking for or it takes too long to load, chances are they’ll head back to the search engine. This way, on the homepage, you can have a few condensed sections of text which then lead to pages with more detailed content. Ideally you would be looking for 300 words minimum on your home page for SEO purposes.

The most important thing to consider is the organisation of your text into easy managed sections with the most important areas at the top without the need to scroll.

 Ever seen a menu or website that you felt was almost offensive? Whether it was too many flashing images, autoplay loud music or the use of Comic Sans?

Psychology can come in to play a lot more than you think when users are scrolling through your site. You can evoke feelings of excitement or relaxation depending on your demographic and industry you are marketing to. Using psychology is the easiest way to increase traffic on your site and get users to stay for longer to ultimately make a purchase.

Here we’re looking at the 3 main design strategies around colour, typeface and imagery.

Colour

Nothing new, but colour can have a huge effect on emotions. Green with envy? Red with anger? But too much of it and your customers will be confused. Remember to include whitespace to break it up your content, especially if you’re going for bold shades.

Here are some of the most common colours and how to use them to your advantage -

• Blue evokes a sense of trust, relaxed and professional. Used by social giant Facebook and Pay Pal, who we all give our bank details to willingly. All though this is quite a good place to start, studies have shown it’s not the best to advertise food. The colour has been associated with poison evolutionarily since there are so few blue foods.
• Red is indicative of vibrancy and energy. Popular with media outlets such as BBC, CNN and YouTube as it grabs attention and encourages actions. It is also the colour of love and romance so used by many dating websites (Tinder, anyone..?).
• Pink is associated with femininity and softness and unsurprisingly used by brands such as Agent Provocateur and Benefit Cosmetics.
• Green is often thought of as refreshing, being associated with the environment. Used heavily in the health and healing industry and also the charity sector used by Oxfam and MacMillan.

Typeface

Whilst the dreaded Comic Sans and even Times New Roman get a bad rep, the legibility of the font you use can have a huge effect on the user experience. 

• Serif fonts such as Times, Georgia and Baskerville are associated with reliability and respect, perfect for corporate sites.
• Arial, Calibria and Century Gothic are Sans Serif fonts and are quite universal in use as clean, modern typefaces.
• If you’re going for a more bold and funky font, Slab Serifs are the way to go like Rockwell, Museo or Courier.
• Script styles evoke a feminine, creative or elegant tone to your site. Great examples are Pacifico or Lobster.

Pay close attention to size and spacing too. A huge font size can be too much to take in and may look like it’s masking the lack of content. Also, too small a font and it may not be easy to read. Keep paragraphs short and snappy in easy to digest chunks. If you don’t leave enough space, the elements of your page can look a bit cramped and people won’t stick around to read it.

Images

The visuals on your website are probably the most important thing. “They” say a picture is worth a 1000 words. Well a video is worth 1.8 million words!

Be careful of the images you choose. As we don’t all have access to a photographer for everything we’re trying to convey, there are great stock photography websites to use (some free). The days of stiff stock images are dead, sites plastered with people grinning and a thumbs up are the last places users will trust. Depending on the message you are going for filtered photos or even cartoon imagery can work best. But please, please avoid images like this...

Have a look at some competitor sites, what images are they using and what can you do to make your site better? For any advice on how to choose your design or for advice on what could work for your industry, just get in touch - support@kommand.me or hit us up on Facebook!

Kommand websites are easy to build and set up in minutes. Utilising advanced SEO features, your site can rank high in searches gaining you more potential customers and revenue!

A great website is the core of your company’s online presence and offers the opportunity to drive business thanks to the information it offers your customers.

The staggering rise in technology and portable devices in recent years means your customers are constantly connected to the internet through their phones; making the need for a fully optimised, responsive site more important than ever before.

Today, two thirds of adults in the UK own a smartphone, with the average user picking up their device 85 times a day. Kommand helps business owners succeed online and offers customisable websites that are mobile-optimised as standard which drive great results at cost effective prices.

What Makes a Great Website?

There are over 1 billion websites in the world today, though not all are great quality, but thanks to Kommand, making a great website is now an easy and manageable task. Follow our top tips to create an engaging website:

First Impressions Count

As the phrase goes “you never get a second chance to make a first impression”. Luckily, we offer professional looking templates that are guaranteed to impress any visitor.

• Our website themes are fully optimised for mobile, tablet and desktop users.
• The colour scheme can be edited to suit your brand and style and images are easily added.
• Kommand websites are ready to launch in minutes

Your website is the chance to communicate with your customers and build a great first impression. Remember your company’s unique selling point should be visible in the content when users first visit your site.

Include Your Company Logo

Incorporating your company logo design into your website is a great way to visually represent your brand.

• Humans are very visual and respond well to images. 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual
• A great logo makes your brand trustworthy and encourages customer engagement. Ask yourself, would you have confidence in a brand that doesn’t have a visual identity?

Kommand’s customisable templates make it easy to upload your logo to your site and instantly create a connection with your customer. We offer a simple re-sizer that helps you crop your image to ensure it looks great on your site.

Engaging Content

Content is king and one of the best ways to engage users is through tools such as sliding banners. When used well, content sliders provide an interactive element to your site that can increase visitor engagement. A positive user experience is vital for the success of your website.

• Content sliders save space by allowing you to fit multiple pieces of content on a single screen.
• Well-designed content sliders encourage users to stay on the page longer, driving engagement.

Kommand websites structure your information into an easy-to-view way. We offer homepage slider banners which sell the main services of your business in a consolidated way.

Blogging Your Way to Success

A website is a great hub to build your company’s community and blogging adds another dimension to this.

Each time you post a blog you create something that is sharable via social media which helps grow your audience. Write you own Kommand blog through your website and use categories and tags to inform the search engines what you’re discussing.

• Blogs establish authority by answering customer questions
• Blog generate leads through Call to Actions ( enter details to receive free offers/free web books etc.)

Companies without sleek websites have little chance of success in today’s market. Kommand offers you advanced features to build, manage and promote your website all at a low cost. Our fully optimised site give you the ultimate platform to launch your business thanks to our easy content editor and beautiful designs. 

For more information about building a website using Kommand or to find out if we are the right fit for your business please drop us your questions: support@kommand.me

Or drop us a call: Glasgow - 0141 345 2130 Middlesbrough - 1642 989 069 London - 0203 026 0730 

A website gives you a controlled way to portray an image of your business as you would like it, giving your customers an idea of the atmosphere and offering before even stepping a foot inside.

Why Should Your Restaurant Have a Website?

While there are general advantages for every business in creating a website, there are a number of specific advantages that can benefit a restaurant. Here are eight reasons your restaurant should have a website:

1. Low Advertising Costs

Print ads and commercials are expensive. With a website you can display an endless amount of print information at a fraction of the cost. Information is available 24/7 to anyone with internet access and you can easily update out-dated information on your website whereas the cost of re-printing flyers is far greater.

2. You Can Give Key Information On Your Location, Menu, Opening Times and Special Offers

A website gives you a platform to provide the basic information your customers may need to know about your restaurant including hours of operation, directions, payment methods and more. By answering these basic questions, you can decrease the amount of time your managers and staff need to spend answering phone calls. You can also keep customers aware of any promotions, such as pre-theatre menus, lunch deals or Christmas offers.

3. You Can Include Customer Testimonials

You can include customer testimonials on your website or if your restaurant has been lucky enough to be featured in a publication such as a review by a restaurant critic in a newspaper you can link to this from your site. This will help to build your restaurant’s credibility.

A website may also help your chances of being reviewed by bloggers as they have a resource to gain information about your history to add to their article.

4. Increases Awareness of Your Business

When people are looking for information the first place they will look is on the web. It is important that if someone is looking for your business they can find the information that they need quickly so they are less likely to become disgruntled and consider your competitor(s).

5. You Can Improve Search Rankings

By investing time into search engine optimisation (SEO) you can help your business show for related search terms. For example if your website shows for someone searching ‘late night café’, ‘Italian restaurant’ or ‘family friendly pub’ you will gain more exposure and hopefully more customers.

6. You Can Build a Solid Brand Image

A website will help your business to build a professional image. Particularly if you are just starting out, a website is a great method for helping customers become acquainted with your brand. With the correct marketing it may even convince customers to seek you out and try for themselves. High quality images will help entice customers to visit.

7. Differentiate Your Business from the Competition

If all of your competitors have an online presence it only makes sense that you should too. Many competing restaurants may already use a website to promote themselves; stealing your business. A well-presented easy to use website will help you highlight what you do well and may persuade customers to pick you over alternatives. Lack of a website may also suggest that you are no willing to invest into your business

8. Book Online Features

You can easily add an online booking link or app to your website giving your customers a quick way to make reservations on the go. 

9. A Way to Promote Other Services

A website gives you a channel to promote your other services. Offer catering or private events? Creating pages for these and using SEO (see point 5!) can generate more business.

10. Sell Gift Cards

With a website which enables online selling you could even sell gift vouchers online. This can help drive more business, particularly around Christmas or other events where people are looking for gifts.

Interested in Setting Up a Website for your Restaurant?

If you don't yet have a website for your restaurant you are missing out on potential customers. Kommand help small businesses build easy-to-use, reliable websites that perform well and have all the features needed to build an excellent online presence. Our websites are designed to rank - and with our bistro theme the building blocks are already in place to set up a user-friendly, beautiful website in just a matter of hours in four easy steps.

For more information about getting your restaurant online why not drop us a call? We specialize in helping small businesses make their stamp online and will be happy to talk you through the options and monthly price packages available.

You can reach us: support@kommand.me

Glasgow - Tel: 0141 345 2130

Middlesbrough - Tel: 01642 989 069

London - Tel: 0203 026 0730 

A website can be crucial to the success of any modern business; it is an enterprise’s online brand, attracts interest, helps sell services and products, and can even be used to reach out to a worldwide market.

However, in order for the website to be effective and garner maximum benefit it needs to be attractive, easy for the visitor to use and free of technical problems.

Why Is Your Website Theme Important?

For any website to attract visitors and maintain interest – which is surely what any business wants – the look and style must be attractive. A website theme helps to determines its design. Typically a website theme will include:

• The type and size of the fonts on the webpage
• The colour schemes and the aesthetics of the site

Getting the theme right is important; the website may contain exceptional content, but unless it is attractive and holds your visitors' interests those efforts will come to nothing.

How Can You Find the Right Website Theme for Your Business?

Finding a website theme is not always easy, especially for those setting up their own site for the first time. However, assistance is available. There are companies that provide a range of website themes that business owners can choose from. Kommand's website builder has a number of themes, including styles suitable for cafes, more corporate or even sector specific such as our recruitment and estate agency packages.

It is important that any website theme chosen is professional looking and user-friendly as possible. Some themes will allow you to tweak some aspects such as modifying the colour scheme, images and layout. This will allow the website to match the style preferred by the company and in so doing have a site which will attract visitors and hopefully customers and clients. This is the route which Kommand follows. You will choose a template which you can then customize to suit your individual business. 

Why Website Maintenance Is Even More Important Today

Having a first class website that helps promote a business and brand and is instrumental in helping it sell services and goods is all-important. Yet, things can go wrong. The best website in the world is absolutely no good to anyone if it constantly crashes, is too slow or if it is offline for any length of time. Should that happen customers are very likely to visit a competitor’s website and in turn purchase what they have on offer.

The key to avoiding these problems is to for any business to ensure its website is kept well maintained. Website maintenance is important if not crucial so finding a company to maintain your website is key. If you decide to build your website on your own you may not have any support should the website crash. In such cases to it is important to know how to access the services of an IT specialist and an umbrella company can prove to be very useful when seeking to hire one. For Kommand websites we provide support and continually update our sites to ensure minimal downtime. Our sites are built to run fast and updates will rarely affect the day to day running of your website.

Any business that does not have a website is putting itself at a disadvantage. That website should be attractive and easy to surf and be available for visitors 24/7. That is why website theme and maintenance is so important if a business is to enjoy success. 

With Kommand we provide our themes and maintenance as standard. To find out if we are the right fit for building a website for your business get in touch today: support@kommand.me

If you are wanting to sell products online the reason for having a website is obvious, but even for those not looking to sell over the internet a website shouldn't be overlooked. Done correctly, a website can act as an extension of your business, acting as your online business card which provides all the important information about your services. A slick, reliable website will build credibility with potential customers and may even sway their decision when comparing you to your competitors.

Creating a Business Website Doesn't Need to Be Difficult

A common reason business owners delay setting up a website is the incorrect assumption that it will be a costly and complicated process. However creating a website for your business may be easier and cheaper than you think. Here's four simple steps to get the ball rolling.

Step 1: Get Your Domain

Setting up a domain is simple. Once you have your desired URL (or a few in case your first choice is taken!) all you need to do is head to a domain registration company website such as GoDaddy.com, among many others, and enter your domain into the search box. You will see which Top Level Domains (TLDs) are available; .org, .com, etc. and how much they cost. Once you have selected your desired domain and paid the fee it can take a couple of days for the domain to become active. 

Confused about how to pick a domain? You can read more about choosing a domain name in this post.

Step 2: Decide the Menu and Content

A common reason that potential customers may leave your website is because they cannot find what they are looking for. A clear, user-friendly menu structure will help towards decreasing your bounce rate.

Another reason to decide on your menu structure is to see the size your website needs to be, which can be helpful when talking to your potential web designers. Start by taking a piece of paper and writing down all the pages you will need; Homepage, Contact Us, About Us, FAQ, etc. If you want to sell products online it can be an idea to write the number of products you have and the number of categories, e.g. if you sell phones your categories may be Apple, Nokia and Samsung and your products. If possible think about your menu structure and sub-pages. Consider the customer and what will make sense to them when navigating through your website.

Step 3: Decide the Logo and Design

If you already have your business it is likely that you will already have a logo in place. If not, you will need to sort this out before launching your website. Some web design companies will be able to offer graphic design services alongside their web design so it might be worthwhile to see if they will be able to do both. Regardless of who you choose to design your logo you will need to come up with some ideas of what you want your logo to look like. A good starting point is to look at your competitors to see if there are particular industry standards that could help, e.g. dental websites tend to go for a clinical blue and white.

Step 4: Get it Online

Once you have the first three steps in place you can give your ideas to your web designer. Many will be able to provide stock images, or even provide further assistance such as content or social media setup. Once the design is finalized it is just a matter of setting the site live.

What Can Kommand Offer?

If you are looking for a web designer to help build a custom website for your business then Kommand website builder can help.

 We offer all of the features above in our custom designs. 

For more information please get in touch: 

Email: support@kommand.me

Glasgow - Tel: 0141 345 2130
London - Tel: 0203 026 0730

- YOU CAN ALSO CHECK OUT THIS POST TO SEE SOME RECENT WEBSITES BUILT WITH KOMMAND.

Building a website can be a daunting prospect. Regardless of the industry you operate in a crucially important step to the success of your site is the usability. Keep this in mind and you will be on the right path to satisfying your customers' needs online, decreasing your bounce rate and improving your conversions.

Keep the Customer In Mind!

A problem that some web designers run into is that they forget who the website is being created for, yes design is important but practicality and usability for the customer is ultimately more important.

In this article we've outlined five web design mistakes to avoid on your website.

1. Poor Readability

Readability is a crucial part of your web design. Yes, design can help in grabbing attention but if the text is difficult to read users won't hand around. Improve your users' reading experience by assessing your colour scheme, font choice and font size. Colours can affect how easy text is to read and overly cursive or small fonts will be more challenging that simple, larger text. 

2. Image Size

Image size can have a massive impact on your website's performance and the user experience. If your images are too big your website might take a long time to load and you risk losing customers who aren't patient enough to wait. If your images are too small you can lose the quality which can damage the perception of your brand.

3. Unorganised Layout & content

The structure of your content will improve the customer journey throughout your site. Start by making sure you have a sensible menu with appropriate categories and all the necessary pages: Homepage, Contact, About, etc. Make sure all your links work and that there are links in appropriate places.

As for your content you should break up large chunks of text with headings as most people will skim a page rather than read it. You may also benefit from using bullet points where appropriate and considering the margins between images and text to improve readability.

Another tip is to set someone the task of being the 'website gardener'. Every month or so ask them to go through all pages of the website and remove or update any inaccurate or out-of-date content. Own a restaurant and still have your Christmas menu up? It's time to take it down. Does your business say you have 15 years' experience when you now have 20? Do you refer to last year as 2015? Keeping information like this up to date improves the experience of your user. 

4. Poor User Experience on Mobile

There is nothing more frustrating than trying to use a desktop version of a website on a mobile device. Buttons are small, text is small and it requires a lot of screen pinching, swiping and patience to find what you are looking for. Mobile usage is quickly overtaking desktop and not having a responsive website today simply isn't as accepted. Lower your bounce rate by using a website theme that looks and works great on any device.

5. Overly Complicated Forms

OK, there may be something more annoying than a website that doesn't work on a mobile or tablet: A form that is too complicated to fill out or doesn't work.  

Does Your Current Site Need an Upgrade?

If your current website falls into any of these traps then it might be time for an update. Kommand make it quick and straightforward to upgrade your website. For more information please get in touch: 

Email: support@kommand.me

Glasgow - Tel: 0141 345 2130
London - Tel: 0203 026 0730

- YOU CAN ALSO CHECK OUT THIS POST TO SEE SOME RECENT WEBSITES BUILT WITH KOMMAND.

When our team at Kommand work with startup businesses we are often asked for help in choosing a domain name for a website. Some are more savvy when it comes to SEO and suggest the idea that using relevant keywords in their domain to potentially help in improving the website's ranking. But is this SEO technique a smart idea in today's digital world? And what is the basic structure and rules you should follow when choosing a domain?

Should You Use Keywords In Your URL?

EMD, which is short for exact-match domain is the name given to the technique of including a keyword phrase in a domain. For example, if you sell wedding favours then the main keyword and the EMD could be www.weddingfavours.com.

Choosing an EMD as a domain name was a common SEO technique back in 2012 and earlier, resulting in a high page ranking and great SEO even without good quality content or website.

But, this is not the case any longer due to Google’s more recent updates, which don’t emphasise on keyword phrase when it comes to SEO.

Be Aware How People Search

An online user will typically choose one of the three kinds of search queries: navigational, informational and transactional. The former (navigational) refers to a query performed for finding your company’s website such as typing in your company's name. For example, to find Facebook a user may type Facebook into Google. For strong brand names your website may show for misspellings e.g. Face book, Facebok, etc.

The second type of query, which is the most common among the three types, refers to a more generic kind of search. For example, words like 'California' or 'cars' might be used. The transactional type refers to a query done with the purpose of finalising a transaction like purchase. For example, the user may use a phrase like Samsung Galaxy J1.

By not using your brand name in your URL e.g. your business is called MacDonald Gifts but your domain is www.weddingfavours.com you may confuse searchers who may think that address is not the correct site. It may mean your business fails to show for navigational searches.

Nowadays search engines have become smarter at recognising which keywords your business is related to. As your brand name grows, major search engines like Google link your brand name with relevant keywords, decreasing the need for including it in your URL. For example, "amazon" is a word in typical English vocabulary. But when you key in the word, “amazon” into Google, it shows the link to Amazon, the world famous online retailer for books and other items. If you wish to use the keyword as part of the domain name for your company’s web address, then consider opting for PMD or partial match domain. 

Tips for Picking a Domain Name

The key to choosing a good brand name is to bear these elements in mind - it should be: short, simple, memorable, descriptive, clear and unique.

Here are some tips to keep you right:

- Consider a Partial Match Domain

If you are just setting up your business from scratch and don't even have the company name you should consider PMD when naming your business, e.g. if you provide gifts, consider adding the words gifts into your business name.

- Avoid Numbers & Deliberate Misspellings

If it is possible, you should avoid using numbers in your domain name. In the event that someone hears the name, the person may not know whether to spell the numbers or use them as they are. You may also want to avoid deliberate misspellings (unless you already have a company wish a deliberately misspelled name) for the same reason. 

- Double Check Combining Words

Though combining two or more words for the name is fine, be careful when you do so. It may be the case that when your website URL is written without spaces it could read as something else. 

- Keep It Short

If possible try you should try to keep your domain less than 15 characters.

Which Extension? .com or .co.uk?

Though there are some sites which use ".biz" as their domain extenstion however there have been instances of such sites being classified as spam by Google. One of the best choices of generic top-level domains or for online businesses is “.com.” If your business operates in a particular country for example the UK, and is a local business (that would never offers services or sell abroad such as a dentist or hairdresser) you may be better using .co.uk over a .com to improve rankings in your local area.

Start Your Business Today!

If you have a great idea for a business and need some help turning that idea into an online reality why not give the team at Kommand a call? We have helped many small businesses create a website that reflects what they need (whether that is to sell products online, adding a recruitment portal, or simply creating a great-looking brochure site).

For more information you can reach us:

Email: support@kommand.me

Glasgow - Tel: 0141 345 2130
Middlesbrough - Tel: 01642 989 069
London - Tel: 0203 026 0730

- You can also check out our last post to see some recent websites built with Kommand.

Your website homepage is one of the most important pages on your site. Not only does it act as the front cover to your business but it also often gains the most rankings from search engines. Getting it right is vitally important to make sure that customers do not bounce from your site and instead become customers or leads.

Various studies show users will spend 8 seconds or less when they land on your website before they make the decision to stay, or leave. Making sure they stay is the aim of the game. The difficulty that comes with a homepage is what to include. Your homepage needs to act like the chameleon of your website. Unlike your sub or product pages which are typically about a specific topic, your homepage needs to be all encompassing, appealing to all kinds of users.

But how can you ensure that happens without complicating your message and confusing your audience? 

What Should You Include on Your Homepage?

We've put together a short infographic of five (perhaps obvious - but often overlooked!) areas to check on your website.

Click to enlarge:

How to Create High Quality ‘About Us’ Page?

When developing the content of an online business's ‘About Us’ web page, there are a few useful tips and pointers from content marketing experts which everyone should bear in mind.

Every online business is unique in its own way: the first job of the person or team crafting this crucial landing page on a company's website, therefore, is to ensure that the uniqueness of the business shines through and makes your landing page truly representative of your brand, mission and corporate values. More often than not we tend to trust a formula we are accustomed to, so we recommend not going crazy with over the top claims and exclamation marks. In terms of brand trust, another good idea is to integrate your own promotional blurb with a few selected customer feedback comments or reviews; that way potential new customers will be able to see the extent of satisfaction you can deliver and judge your business positively.

When developing the ‘About Us’ page for your business website, bear in mind that this page is often the most visited. This is because people, and we mean potential customers, seek out information about a product or service provider before parting with their hard-earned cash. Therefore the content and structure must come across as convincing, inviting, and trustworthy. Dodgy html and beige page backgrounds do not convey the idea of a dynamic business, despite of what the blurb (content text) actually claims about the business itself. So practice what you preach and deliver an eye-catching page that says "this business matters".

Is Your Content Marketing Strategy in Place?

The content marketing strategy you choose is up to you, but there are ways to make sure that your ‘About Us’ page stands out and ranks high in search results. SEO basics should become the ABC of every online business owner, whether an old hand or a budding e-entrepreneur; however, as the rules of the game keep changing, it is recommended that business website owners and managers keep up with SEO trends. The key to the efficient SEO strategy is to create a high quality and engaging content with keywords, links, meta-descriptions and title tags.

Last but not least, ensure that your About Us page includes full and up-to-date contact details: nothing is more disappointing than to find an out of date landline number and an old postal address, or a generic 'info' email address.

Tailor your About Us web page content - make it personal, proactive. Make it reach out to your existing and potential customers. Finally, these days e-commerce is all about networking: make sure your About Us page features your business's social handles and Skype details if applicable.

If you would like to find out more about content marketing strategy for your online business contact Kommand.me team.

Why should your online business be different? Just because you can't see your customers 'enter' your shop doesn't mean you monitor their experiences and improve them for the future.

If your business has a great user experience, is clear on its value proposition, is designed well and ranks highly there is little reason why it cannot generate sales or leads for your business, especially if you market it correctly. Conversely, an old, slow, non user friendly website will lead to loss of conversion opportunities lost out to your better performing competitors.

If you already have a website up and running, or are looking to build a website from scratch here are five areas to bear in mind to improve your competitiveness and chance of conversion.

1. Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?

Nowadays this should really be a given. But unfortunately many businesses still overlook the importance of a mobile friendly website. Think about your own online browsing, how often do you view websites from your smartphone or tablet? Your customers are typically the same. 

You should speak to your web designer about making your website mobile friendly, or if your website is particularly old, you may benefit from a complete face-lift, mobile responsive theme and all!

2. Do You Update Content Regularly?

Fresh content is key to driving your website. Google have cited countless times that fresh content is important to their rankings. This is for multiple reasons:

- It gives them more to crawl and therefore a better chance you can rank for related terms.

- It shows your website is active.

- It can help indicate that your website has authority in its field.

Fresh content will also increase your chances of people sharing links to your website from social media, or even their own websites. 

If you don't already you should consider adding a blog to your website. This will give you a great platform to add content routinely to your website. You should also review website content regularly. If you run a restaurant do you have outdated menus? (e.g. Christmas 2015). Take each page in turn and check for anything outdated, do you state you have 13 years' experience when you now have 15? Do you mention last year and refer to 2014? All of these changes help improve your freshness and also improve user experience.

3. Do You Have Defined Landing Pages?

A landing page is a webpage that is specifically designed to follow on form an external link. If you run PPC or other paid ad campaigns for your business you will want to consider the route the customer follows. If they ad is for a particular product or service but it links simply to the homepage you may lose that customer, as they have not been directed to what they are looking for. By creating specific landing pages you will keep the customer journey fluid from ad right through to purchase or lead. You can read more about designing landing pages in this post.

4. Is Your Value Proposition Clear?

When a potential lead or customer lands on your website can they see quickly and clearly why they should pick you? It can sometimes be difficult to see this yourself as you will undoubtedly know your business inside out, so you may want to ask friends, family or strangers to check your website and see if they can explain what your business does and why it is different. If they fail, this could be an indication that your website isn't clearly promoting it's USP.

Alongside this you should check that your website promotes quick calls to action and snippets that catch attention. For example if you run an online shop that offers free shipping or have a coupon code, make this clear from the get-go. Customers shouldn't have to hunt for important information.

5. Is It Easy to Get in Touch?

Following on from the point before, make it easy to get in touch. Include an FAQ page if possible as well as a way to contact if their query cannot be answered by your site's content. You should ensure that your contact form works properly and is quick and easy to fill out. Add your phone number and social media links clearly, and if necessary consider adding a live chat widget.

Speaking of Getting in Touch...

If you need help with your business's website, whether you are just starting up or looking for a redesign, the Kommand team can help. Email us today with your query: support@kommand.me 

Alternatively you can call us:

Glasgow - Tel: 0141 345 2130
Middlesbrough - Tel: 01642 989 069
London - Tel: 0203 026 0730

"An image speaks a thousand words."

So the saying goes, and quite rightly so. Images online have proven time and time again to be effective at engaging potential customers with a recent statistic stating "coloured visuals increase people's willingness to read a piece of content by 80%." In all areas from social media and email marketing to blog posts and website design, the images you choose can reduce your bounce rate and prompt people to browse your website.

Which Images Should You Use On Your Website?

If possible it is always best to use your own high quality photographs. Many people can detect stock photography and it is to difficult to build a trust and warmth towards your brand (especially if you are a start-up!) if you are using other people's photos.

Putting this aside it is understandable that when you are setting up a website for the first time you may use stock images as a quick and effective option that will keep you on the right side of copyright laws. Over time you may invest in hiring a photographer to take photos of your office or services. You may also use stock images to bring a level of professionalism to your business.

There are websites which charge premium prices for their images however there are also hundreds of other websites which have free (or cheap) images you can use. It is just a matter of knowing where to look.

You can learn about copyright on images in this post we wrote back in July which explains the different types of photo licenses and how you can use them.

If you are looking for free images to use on your website whether for banner images or to spruce up your blog posts, here are ten websites you can try.

1. FindA.Photo

FindA.Photo has a range of different images split into categories. You can also search by colour which is useful if your branding has a particular palette it uses. Using similar colours across your website will help to portray a cohesive feel regardless of the page the user is on. 

2. Allthefreestock

All the free stock acts like a directory of different websites which have free pictures. It also includes free videos, mock-ups, sound effects and colour inspiration; perfect for those starting their website from scratch and are unsure of their branding.

3. Stock Up

Stock Up has a great range of all genres and types of images including still life, people, places, textures, etc.

4. PicJumbo

PicJumbo has images in a variety of different categories such as fashion and architecture. Their search feature allows you to search for quote specific images such as "iphone 6" or "man pouring champange"

5.  Unsplash

Unsplash has a particular style of photography with a dreamy, filtered look which could be perfect for banner images on a website.

6. Pexels

Pexels update their website with 20 new images every day which is perfect if you have already exhausted the offers from other websites.

7. ISO Republic

ISO Republic have a wide choice of photographs, including many flat-lay photos of food and tech.

8. Gratisography

Gratisography have a unique style to their photography. All images are very eye-grabbing which could be ideal to use for social media posts.

9. Moveast

Moveast have a lot of food and culture photos. They also have photo sets of particular events, for example marathons or festivals.

10. Start Up Stock Photos

Start Up Stock Photos focus on small business and office. The website isn't updated as often but could be great for a small business or agency looking for photos of macs or meeting rooms.

Need A Website Designed for Your Business?

If you are starting a business and looking to set up a website Kommand website builder can help. We offer a range of packages to suit all budgets, from pre-made templates to website and logo design specific to your business. For more information please contact us: support@kommand.me. 

Even if you are not planning to sell online, it is pretty much essential nowadays that your business has a website. A website will help customers find out information about your business, whether that be opening hours, menus, your service offerings, testimonials or contact details. Think of your website as another way to sell your business that could result in sales and conversions offline.

What to Consider When Designing Your Website

Just like your offline marketing materials and office appearance, your website must reflect your professionalism. Credibility is often linked to professionalism, something that is particularly important for start-ups who haven’t established their brand yet. If your website is able to convey the correct image for your brand, your visitors are less likely to pick your competitors.

If you are wanting to set up a website there are a number of different ways in which you can do so however two of the most common are: have a custom web design made or use a pre-prepared website template/theme. Both of these options have different considerations and benefits, and which you decide to choose will be dependent on your individual business’s requirements and costs.

The pros and cons of a website theme verses a custom website design are explained below.

Website Theme

If you decide to build your website on a website creation tool such as WordPress your template will initially be bland, white and unbranded. Themes dictate the way your website looks. If you are using a website builder you can install free or paid themes into your website to automatically change the look of your website.

Pros:

The benefit of this method is typically the cost (it tends to be cheaper to buy a pre-made theme than to get a web designer to build one). It can also be quicker as themes can be bought and installed instantly. It can also be easier as you can try out themes online and find one you like before purchasing.

Cons:

You will typically be limited in how you can adjust or change the theme. There is also potential that someone could have the same theme.  The theme may lack certain features you need, and you may lack the ability to add these as your business grows.

Custom Web Design

A custom web design is a unique, one-off web design built by a web designer. 

Pros:

The key benefit of this method is the flexibility for the website to be exactly how you need, with all of your business requirements. You will be able to create a website specific to your budget, without wasting money on features you don't need. You can prioritise features or even ask your web designer to build custom ones.

Cons:

This method will typically cost more and will take more time as the designer must make the design from scratch. You may also need to pay for image rights.

A Hybrid?

It might be the case that your business sits somewhere in the middle, lacking the budget for a full website design from scratch but wanting a design which is reflective and unique to your brand. In these circumstance it can be possible for a web designer to build a custom theme for your website.

Build Your Website Any Way You Want with Kommand

It is important that you consider the key requirements of your website. For some businesses a website theme will be fine, such as those with a store front and strong offline marketing. For those who have strong competition online, or a strong brand identity a custom web design may be the best option. For those in the middle, restrained by budget but looking for a unique look, or set of features a custom theme may be what is best. 

At Kommand, we have a range of pre-made themes you can use to build a website with prices starting from as little as £9 per month. Alterntively, we have web designers available to build you a custom design through our web packs. For more information or to speak to someone about the requirements of your business please contact us today:

Glasgow: 0141 345 2130
Middlesbrough: 01642 989 069
London: 0203 026 0730

Email: support@kommand.me

So last year you created a fabulous website or online store (perhaps with the help of Kommand) and whilst jumping that first hurdle and setting up a mobile and user friendly website is great, is it enough to keep your site visitors happy?

The purpose of creating a wonderful website shouldn’t merely be to draw viewers, but also to entice them to spend much time exploring it. But how do you know if your online audience are keen on your site or interact with it actively?

To find out more about your site visitors for the purpose of growing the audience, you can use Google Analytics the free web analytics service offered by Google that tracks website traffic. Google Analytics has a whole host of tools and it can feel overwhelming logging in and trying to figure out what the charts and numbers mean.

Today's post covers three of the major Google Analytics metrics to get help you start understanding the numbers and make changes to improve them.

1. Bounce Rate

Found under Audience -> Overview

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of site visitors who merely visit a blog post or web page without clicking any internal link. In other words, the visitor “bounces” away from the site or has no real interaction with it. So a high bounce rate might not seem something positive. But, there could be various reasons why a site visitor doesn’t interact with the specific page.

One good reason could be because the visitor doesn’t find it relevant to what he or she is looking for. A low bounce rate doesn’t necessarily mean that site visitors aren't happy with the specific page. For example, a combination of a high number of page views, a low bounce rate and low conversions might mean site visitors didn’t find what they were looking for and left the site unhappy.

If you wish to improve the bounce rate, analyse the pages with a high bounce rate, figure out what’s wrong with them and take steps to improve them. For example, adding pertinent links to other pages that have much-liked content may help. Remembering that your homepage may not be the first page that your visitors land on can help change the attitude towards your website. If you have webpages which are unhelpful or unnecessary consider adding more content to make them more engaging. Each page should be treated as a landing page so make each one count.

2. Exit Rate

Found under Behaviour -> Overview

Simply put, the exit rate refers to the number of times that site visitors leave a specific page, but after a minimum of one interaction. In other words, let’s say that a site visitor loads a specific page, this data will be reflected in both the exit rate and bounce rate. But, if the page viewer took a look at another page prior to leaving via the aforementioned page, then it will be reflected only in the data of exit rate.

Analyse the high exit rates for pages (with the exception of your site’s last page) and consider ways to provide value to site visitors so that they would explore the website longer. For example, you can include anchor links on the page for connecting it to great content.

3. Average Time on Page

Found under Behaviour -> Overview

Average time on page refers to the average time that a site visitor spends on a specific page. A higher average time may indicate more participation by the visitor. If it is the product page of an online store, it might mean the visitor spent more time on viewing various products.

Analyse the pages that have above average time and figure out what makes them attractive. The analysis of such pages may provide you with insight into what kind of page layout or content makes your online audience happy. You may find that blog posts have garnered a high average time on page; this may suggest the content is useful and could be posts that you re-circulate on social media.

How to Track Your Kommand Website on Google Analytics

Tracking your Kommand website on Google Analytics couldn't be easy. Here's how:

1. Sign up for Google Analytics (it's free).

2. Add your website name and URL.

3. You will be given a tracking code. You can find this by clicking the Admin tab at the top and then in the middle (property) section click Tracking Info and Tracking Code.

4. On the Kommand admin page click Site Settings on the right hand menu and then Site Config and enter the code.

Some business owners may think that having a wonderful company website with great online visibility, attractive web design, easy navigation features and superb content is more than sufficient.

That might have been the case a couple of years ago, but not any longer. In today’s world, competition among various businesses is intense. Not only are great websites necessary, but killer landing pages (also called as landers or lead capture pages) are also vital for generating sales, referrals and leads.

But how do you create a landing page that works? Here's our tips.

5 Tips for Creating the Perfect Landing Page for Your Website

A landing page is where a site visitor arrives after clicking on an ad or some other icon or link. For many businesses it is their homepage however there are also instances when clicking on ads or search engine results can lead to other pages of a website. If your business sells products or services you may want to treat each page as a landing page specific to that product or service.

1. Clean, Visually Appealing Design

The design for a landing page should preferably be simple, clean and visually appealing to site visitors. The use of subheaders, buttons, images, headers and other items for creating a professional lander is vital.

2. Use Contextual Images

A great tip to creating a successful page is using contextual images, something that is a key web design trend these days. Contextual images refer to images of your company’s products within the context of your site visitors’ lives. In today’s rushing world, visual images that convey specific messages are becoming more and more appealing to online users.

3. Include Videos

It can also be a good idea to include a video that shows your business's USP or product or service in use. The overall aim of a landing page is to reduce bounce rate by quickly engaging your site visitors. Often the user will have landed on your website looking for information or a solution to a problem. If your landing page can quickly show that it will deliver these requests then it is more likely to be a success.

4. Make the Site Mobile Responsive

Another great tip is to make sure that the page is mobile responsive so that the page fits nicely into a tablet or smartphone screen during viewing. When deciding on a web designer or website builder you should check if the final website will be mobile responsive.

5. Include Testimonials

Including testimonials, star ratings and recommendations is also a great way to make your landing page engaging. These also give your business credibility and are a proven way to improve conversion rates.

Driving Traffic to Your Landing Page

Once you are happy with your landing page you then need to work towards driving online traffic to it. One way is to send the said page to subscribers as part of your company’s email campaign. Another great way is to post the page link on various social networking sites like Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, Periscope and Facebook. Ask a good writer to create a blog post that provides valuable information, which connects to your company’s product and then, link the post to the page.

For ensuring that your page can be found by online or mobile users using organic search, adjust relevant SEO settings. Another great way to drive online traffic to your lander is to create PPC ad campaigns on major search engines and link them to your page. Though this is actually an old idea, but it still works very well especially when it comes to new products or product promotion campaigns.

Start with a Great Website

Remember that the key purpose of the page is to get visitors to click a hyperlink for a certain action like subscribing to your company’s newsletter or buying something from your online shop. If you don’t have prior experience creating web pages or landing pages, you can use a website building platform like Kommand. We have ready to use professional templates or alternatively we can build a powerful and suitable website from scratch aimed at generating leads, sales and referrals.

Alongside the development of mobile browsing also came the development of mobile apps and many businesses opted to create their own business apps instead of choosing to build a mobile responsive site.

But is this the best idea? In an ideal world consumers should be able to move seamlessly between desktop and mobile, which is where mobile responsive sites, such as those made with Kommand website builder, have an advantage over applications.

Why Is It a Risk to Focus Solely on Mobile Apps?

Many designers predicted the demise of big screen computing, leading to a focus on producing apps only for communication, gaming and retail. Studies show that 93% of us who research products and services on our mobile apps go on to make purchases.

Our actual purchase method, however, will be spread across the full range of possibilities, with many of us still feeling more confident shopping on desktops and laptops, than mobile devices. In fact, research shows that less than 50% have more than one or two commercial apps on mobile devices, with only 10% of us saying that we use them more than once a day. For retail and service providers who rely solely on apps this is not good news.

The Advantages of Mobile Responsive Design

We've all been frustrated when webpages and games, or other content we want to access doesn't respond the way we want on the devices we're using. This is where mobile responsive sites come into their own. When a website has a responsive design its layout and content adapts itself to the screen size, from a desktop monitor to a smartphone - no need to alter device settings, the response is automatic. Mobile responsive sites fit seamlessly onto desktop monitors, laptops, tablets and mobile phones.

Before companies launch new apps they need to bear the statistics and reality in mind. Mobile devices only have limited memories and retail applications are the first to go in favour of our games, entertainment and social apps. If your customers are doing serious and in-depth research of potential, high-cost purchases they are still more likely to do so when sitting comfortably, rather than on the move.

Pros and Cons of App Only Design

Retail applications work best when linked to loyalty and reward shopping schemes, with over 20% of customers at the moment saying they use apps for these features. Retailers are looking for more and more novel ways of pushing customers to their apps by providing unique selling points, such as Magic Mirrors. These showcase products and allow us to play around with clothes and accessories, creating outfit styles, which customers then go on to purchase.

This form of e-Commerce, or e-Tailing is big in India where smartphone numbers are rising rapidly, with 3 out of 5 smartphone owners subscribe to mobile broadband - giving a staggering 220 million plus mobile internet users, a huge potential market. A downside is that retailers are losing brand identity as Google and Facebook capitalise on Mobile Commerce, promoting multiple brands together. Other cons to app-only retailing, is that mobile data plans are expensive, and data coverage still problematic in some areas. Multiple, and perceived intrusive, communications with customers can also be counter-effective, annoying rather than attracting. In the face of these downsides, most e-Tailers will remain wedded to mobile responsive sites, allowing them to target the largest possible audience.

Create a Responsive Ecommerce Website on Kommand

If you're interested in selling products online but don't want the hassle or expense of working with a web design agency or freelance designer, Kommand's online shop packages may be the solution you are looking for. Available at three different monthly prices our themes are mobile responsive, easy to manage and SEO friendly. Find out more about our packages on our Pricing page. 

With online marketing the norm for most small businesses looking to expand their horizons, it's crucial that your company and website find a way to stand out from the crowd online in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Frequently Asked Question pages, or ‘FAQs’, are a common way of underlining key points and summaries, and should serve as a great cornerstone for any website design project, whether you're starting from scratch, or giving existing company websites an informational overhaul.

An essential resource for you and your customers if you have just created a website, an effectively written question and answer page is not just a great marketing strategy, but a terrific way of focusing your customer support efforts. 

To provide visitors with the best possible experience when they arrive at your site, make sure you've done your homework, with relevant and researched pages that will answer all their questions.

Need some inspiration to get started on creating your own quality FAQ pages? The website building team at Kommand have put together a few essential tips to help set you on your way.

1. User-Friendly Design Wins Every Time

Nothing puts a customer off more quickly than a poorly designed website. As online users become increasingly impatient, you have just seconds to capture and maintain a visitor's interest, so good web design and user-friendly navigation is key to ensure all important click-through rates. You should take this into consideration when designing an FAQ page. If your business has a lot of potential queries it may be beneficial to break the topics into categories in separate drop downs from your menu.

If you are however adding many pages and extended information to your website, ensure your content is correctly categorized so users can find solutions to their queries promptly. Ensure ongoing maintenance of your site, keeping an eye out for broken links and missing pages. Customers are likely to leave your site altogether if they hit upon a broken page, so ensure basic hitches like this are not an issue.

2. Keep It Simple

Get customers to the information they're after more quickly than ever, with clear and concise language, and pared-back page design for easy reading. Don't alienate your readers with overly long questions, or answers, and always write with the terms and phrases they are most likely to be using. 

3. Accessible for Everyone

It's important to strike the right note with visitors, so feel free to carry your tone of voice through to your FAQs and information pages, but always ensure your text is accessible enough to cater to as wide an audience as possible. Don’t use jargon, and steer away from terminology that is too specialised. Colloquialisms and slang terms are a definite no-no unless absolutely relevant to your brand or service. 

4. Stimulate With Visuals

Engaging visuals can help make a page. Depending on your exact industry, they might even be an absolute must for the bare minimum of information your customer base expects. Great for capturing attention on a busy page, imagery and videos can help navigate visitors through complicated explanations and advanced concepts with ease. For even more refined customer support, businesses can upload thorough responses and extended answers as videos, delivering key information in completely accessible formats for everyone. In some instances a video can explain an answer more effectively than a large chunk of text.

5. Focus on Commonly Asked Questions

Every opinion matters, but not every question needs a home on your answer pages. If you've done your homework, you'll have a good idea of expectations of customers arriving to your site, and know the most commonly asked questions potential customers are likely to ask. These are the queries that can swamp customer support inboxes, so shave hours of your administration hours by providing insightful responses to the questions most customers will ask first. If you are just starting out then it can be beneficial to ask customers the kinds of questions they have.

6. Contact Details and Correspondence

Sometimes, however thorough and informative your FAQs, some visitors to your site will still have further questions. The last thing you want from an FAQ page is one which does not answer the question and the visitor has no obvious way to contact you. To maintain engagement and ensure conversions, give contact details prominence on your page(s), and ensure all correspondence is monitored and replied to. If you've already established a Q&A taxonomy, refer visitors to specific email addresses and departments for answers to their questions. If you notice that you are receiving a certain question often then you can add it to your list of FAQs. 

FAQs: Yes or No? 

A well designed FAQ page can benefit your website's SEO and can help improve your customer service. However it is not appropriate for every business. If you are struggling to find questions to put on an FAQ page or don't have important information to relay to your customer then you should reconsider whether your business really requires one. If you can successfully answer common questions on your homepage then an FAQ page may not be for your business. 

However for many businesses, not just Ecommerce websites, an FAQ page can be a great way to organise important information about your business or service.

People often make the assumption that design is simply how something looks. In reality, design is a significantly more complicated process, involving integration of aesthetics and usability.

Design (in the aesthetic sense) is also highly subjective. What one person thinks look great, another will hate. This problem can make it difficult to assess whether the aesthetic parts of your design; font, colours, branding, etc. are affecting your website's performance.

Arguably it can be much easier to check if your website's performance by using non-subjective, measurable elements. Right this second it is likely that there are parts of your website which are frustrating the visitors to your site, elements which are broken or parts which are simply old fashioned. One or more of these could be preventing the generation of new leads and ultimately affecting your website's conversion rate.

If you have had your website for a number of years and haven’t checked it on simple usability components, now is the time. Here’s a five point checklist for you to quickly assess the health of your website.

5 Point Website Health Checklist

1. Is your website showing up on page one of your targeted search terms?

Check: Think about the term(s) that you would like your website to show for, e.g. dentist in edinburgh or telephone solutions for small business. Does your business rank on the listings for these terms? If not then you may benefit from assessing your website's SEO. 

Solution: There are many areas you can use to work on to improve your website's chance of ranking for relevant search terms.

To begin you should come up with a list of the key terms you wish to rank for. Run a local business like a hairdresser? Then local listings will be important to you so concentrate on search terms with a location, e.g. gift shop manchester. Once you have the terms you are targeting you should check all Title Tags and Meta descriptions. These are the titles and descriptions that show on search engine results pages. On Google it is the blue link and the text underneath the URL. You should aim to place keywords at the beginning of these where possible. After this you can begin optimising your website's content including copy and blog posts. By placing keywords in titles and using them cleverly throughout your text you can increase your chances of ranking for these terms.

You should be aware that Google and other search engines penalize keyword 'stuffing' so instead of having the term dentist in edinburgh repeated multiple times throughout the page, hidden behind images, in white font or other black-hat SEO tricks, you should instead use semantic variations. Google has indicated that when a website is crawled it will be able to understand variations for a term and determine the page's quality and authenticity. For example it can be more beneficial to use dental practice, dentistry, dental term, and other variations.

You should also include alternate headings for any image on your webpage. Not only will this help if for some reason the image doesn't load, but will also be crawled by search engines.

2. Do you get enquiries from your website?

Check: How many enquiries or mail list signups does your website receive? Less than you are aiming for?  

Solution: If you are attempting to direct users to contact you either through a contact form or by phone or email then you should assess how often and where you have this information. Often websites will include this on every page, not just a contact page so that regardless of which page your visitors land on they have a better chance of converting. You should make sure your form is clear and easy to use and that your email address works(!). Ask friends and family to visit your website and send you a question and find out the difficulties they run into.

3. Does your website have the essential pages and content?

Check: Think about what you would look for when visiting a website with your products or services, does your website have the relevant pages and content to catch these queries and expectations?

Solution: Think about what a visitor to your site would need. If you run a service business, like a restaurant or beauty salon, then a menu or service list might be a key component. You may also benefit from a thorough About page if your business needs to build trust, such as a dentist or investment company. You may also want to include a blog or gallery to give your business a clear voice. 

4. Is it selling your business’s USP?

Check: When you land on your website’s homepage is it clear what your business does?

Solution: It can be easy to forget that not everyone knows your business as well as you do. You can never make anything too simple online, especially now that website visitors are becoming increasingly impatient. It is suggested that we decide in as little as 1/20th of a second whether or not a site is appealing. You need to do something that will capture your audience in this minute time frame.

It can be a good idea to include a clear description of what your business offers and why your business is different from competitors as a heading on your homepage. Use a clear call to action and differentiating point: cheaper; faster; sale; free delivery, etc. can all engage people to stay on your website. Some businesses choose to use a hero image (a large, prominent banner) to engage customers.

5. Is your website mobile optimised?

Check: Mobile has now taken over desktop in number of users. If your website doesn’t work well on a mobile then you could be unintentionally damaging your website’s chances of converting. If you think desktop is bad, people are even more impatient on mobile. The instant gratification has meant few people will wait more than a couple of seconds for a webpage to load and will simply click the back button on their browser if they believe your website to be too slow or non-user friendly.

Solution: If your website hasn’t had an update in five or ten years then now is the time. Having a website that works on mobile doesn't have to cost the earth. Website builders, like Kommand, make running a website simple. All of the Kommand themes are mobile optimised meaning your website will look great on any device with no need for complicated programming. Better still it can cost as little as £9 month. For more information on Kommand you can visit our tour.

The proliferation of online media in today's world could perhaps make you naïvely assume that every business is adjusting their strategy to adapt the web.

However a recent report published by the UK government examining the current digital capabilities of small and medium enterprises gives evidence to indicate otherwise, with a staggering 36% of small businesses interviewed stating they still have no online presence at all, either through a website, or being listed on online directories.

The research, carried out by BMG Research and Durham University, surveyed over 800 British businesses to understand their digital presence and the supposed barriers to entry and found that for medium sized businesses the proportion jumps to 94% who do have a website. So what’s the problem for small businesses? Perhaps there aren’t as many? Well… no. Currently there are an estimated 5.2 million businesses in the UK, with small firms accounting for 99.3 percent of all private sector businesses. If anything there’s more small businesses, so why the lack of presence online?

Why Small Business Owners Don’t Have a Website

If you own a small business and fall into the category of not using the internet to improve your conversion or sales then keep reading as we examine some of the key findings from the report, de-bunk some of the myths surrounding websites and hopefully convince you why your business can benefit from the web. If you do have a website, then stay tuned until the end as you may fall into your own category without even realising.

The Most Common Complaints Small Businesses Give for Not Having a Website

Let's take some of these issues and discuss them further...

- You don't have the time, money or knowledge to set up a website.

Perhaps you think making a website for your business is too difficult, time consuming or costly. Well, you are right, and wrong. Working with a web design agency to build an all-singing, all-dancing website can be expensive. However you would only really have to work with a web design agency if you are planning on starting an Ecommerce business that needs to incorporate lots of different development elements.

Alternatively, if your business is simply looking to run a CMS website (not sell online) the possibilities with website builders are endless. For example, with Kommand website builder you can have a website up and running in a matter or hours. The packages start from just £9 per month and are easily edited using the drag and drop facilities.

- You lack digital skills or don't know the opportunities and benefits.

Although it's easy to fall into the camp of thinking your business simply doesn't need a website, there really is no reason for you not to be online. The benefits of having a website include:

• Providing a 24/7 way for people to find out more information about your business.
• Generating more leads.
• Building your business's credibility and exposure.
• Competitive necessity.

It might also be the case that you are already aware of website builders but still think that it will be too difficult to run a site as you don't have a logo or branding. Kommand web designers can design you a logo, and your website if you don't think you have the creative eye, in a matter of weeks.

- You have an attitudinal barrier towards being online or don't understand potential online security threats.

It is a good idea to think about the changing habits and attitudes of customers. Whilst at one time having a website would have been a luxury for small businesses, today it is almost an expectation that a customer will be able to find you online, if even just to get your number to call you. By considering the needs and thoughts of your customers you will be in a better position to understand the importance of how a website can help customers find your services, build trust and potentially do business with you.

You may also be wary of having a website in case of a possible hack. If a hacker gains access to a website then they can alter content and damage your reputation. Any good website builder will be able to override any potential issues if necessary take your site down until the issue is fixed. 

Are You In the 64% of Small Business Owners With a Website?

If you have made it through the points above and are thinking, 'I do have a website for my small business so my business must be performing better than those without' then that's great, but have you considered whether your website is actually any good? 

Of those who did have a website the recent report also showed that undergoing re-design isn't as common as might be expected, with 22% of those interviewed stating they had never had a website re-design. From this percentage, 12% have a website 5-10 years old and 8% have a website over 10 years old(!)

The web has changed a lot since 2005, your website should move along with the trends. In 2005, YouTube and Reddit had just been launched. Today 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute and Reddit has around 5,000,000 page views per day. Since 2005 mobile has also become an intrinsic part of everyday life. Having a website will help your business capture the attention of the growing number of mobile searchers. 

If you're still unconvinced or want to learn more about website builders then you can read this post. Alternatively, you can contact one of our team.

If you run a small business you will understand how important it is to manage your cash flow, especially if you are just at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey. Every penny will count as you try to make it through the often difficult first year of trading and where necessary, additional spending will be cut to avoid the business failing.

If your business is not trading online, as an Ecommerce store, then you may think running a website is an expensive, time-consuming and unnecessary addition - and something you can think about once you are established.

However with the expectations of today's customers, not having an online presence can stunt the growth of your business. A recent study found that over a quarter of small businesses still don't have a website and for those that do have a website 31% are not responsive, meaning they are not user friendly for tablets and smartphones.

Kommand: The Solution You've Been Searching For

With Kommand you can build a website for your business for as little as £9 per month. For this price you can choose from a range of professional themes, all of which are mobile responsive. Kommand sites are also search engine friendly allowing them to rank highly on search engine results.

For a bit of fun, and to put that price in perspective, for £9 you can buy,

• 4 small Starbucks Lattes (£2.25 each)
• 3 Tesco Finest Smoked Salmon Sandwiches (£3 each)
• 1 Cineworld Adult cinema ticket (£8.80)
• A taxi ride home when it's raining (~£9)

Cutting out just one of these from your budget a month will free up enough cash to run a Kommand website. Better still with our user friendly design, Kommand is simple to run, edit and manage, allowing you to get on with the day-to-day running of your business.

Why Choose Kommand as Your Website Builder?

Kommand’s USP is the quality of our coding, compared to every other platform out at the moment. From site creation all the foundations are right for you, our user to build your online presence. We also offer a 30 day free trial so you can see what you think. Plus we have a team of developers here to help who are constantly working on upgrades and improvements to our service. 

Recent Websites Launched with Kommand Website Creator

We recently launched a new website for Home Improvement company, At Last Your Home. Check out their website below to see just one of the many ways Kommand can be used to build a website that fits your brand aims and identity.

For more information about Kommand you can visit our main webpage or follow us on Twitter for updates @kommandme

So what can you do to make your website stand out from the rest? Research has shown that a well designed webpage with an appropriate selection of high-quality website images can be a good place to start and will help you capture attention, establish credibility and lower bounce rates.

How Do Images Help Your Website?

Image selection is very important to your website design. However in a lot of cases using clearly obvious stock images can actually be a deterrent for a visitor and when possible it is best to hire a professional photographer photograph your product or service being used. Using your own images will help build a better trust with your customer base as they are able to get a real feel of your brand personality. Obviously this option can be very expensive and is not always available due to cost restraints so many businesses turn to stock photos to add imagery to their site.

Stock Images: Types, Licenses and How to Use

The first thing to remember with regards to stock images is that not all of them are free to use. You need to be particularly careful when you scour the web for pictures for your website, as selecting images protected by copyright laws has the potential to land you in serious legal trouble.

There are three main types of images on the web: Right Protected Images, Royalty Free Images, and Public Domain Images.

As you might have already guessed, Right Protected Images are indeed protected by law, and you'll have to negotiate a fee with the owner beforehand, as well as the amount of time you can use the images for. This can often prove to be an extremely pricey method of obtaining images, and may not necessarily be the best move for anyone who is just starting up a business site. When webpages are established and money is flowing, purchasing full rights for Right Protected Images becomes a much easier task.

Royalty Free Images work in a similar way to Right Protected Images, but can be used by the purchaser as frequently as they like after agreeing an initial price. One of the biggest websites for obtaining Royalty Free Images is Shutterstock, which offers different price variations dependent on the amount of images your require. Whilst this option allows you to splash high-quality images across your webpage at will, keep in mind that the photographer will also be selling to other businesses. These very same images may be being used by a competitor so it would be a good idea to check before committing to purchase.

Public Domain Images are the simplest way to start up a website. These are free to use for anyone at any time. Some of the best places to locate excellent free images include Flickr, Openphoto and Bigfoto. Whilst these are free to use, it is expected that material which is public domain, copyright-free, is considered plagiarized if you don't attribute the source.

Picking Images for Your Website

Using a Royalty Free Images is the most common way for adding images to a homepage, subpage or landing page. You should take time to carefully select the best images you can and consider the following:

• Is the image in-keeping with your business brand and website design?
• Is this image being used by your competitors?
• Is the image obviously a stock image?

It can also be useful to find an image you like and visit the user's page who uploaded it to see if there are other photos shot in a similar style you can use. This is an easy way to keep a coherent look to your design.

Still Feeling Confused?

If you are still finding the task of designing a website overwhelming then you may benefit from speaking to a web design team who can work with you to get your website up and running. Kommand website builder, allows business owners to have a clean and professional looking website without having to worry about the technical aspects of maintenance and hosting. Talk to us today to find out how we can help.

Many millions are spent on designing business websites every year, and the reason is very simple: the visual impact of your website is often the first thing your potential customer takes in, and you need to make the right first impression if you hope to convert visitors. Taking time to get this right is very important to your business's success and it can seem like an overwhelming and daunting process. However by following a few steps you can help narrow down your choice and find the design specifications right for you and your business.

Keep It Simple

In the age of powerful and cheap computer graphics software, it's easy to go overboard with the millions of colours available to the designer. Good graphic design relies on creating a pleasing contrast between colours and shapes, and too many colours can distract from the central message you want to convey. A standard rule of thumb is to choose a complementary palette of only three or four colours, ensuring that nothing gets too lurid and unpleasant to look at. Designers will often choose colours that compliment each other; those which are opposite each other on the colour wheel, or colours that are analogue to each other; sit side by side on the colour wheel.

Choosing Your Palette

Branding is an essential part of web design, and the colour scheme you choose has more effect on this than you may realise. You should ask yourself what your website is trying to achieve, who it is aiming to appeal to, and what range of colours are likely to help most in conveying the correct impression. There are numerous studies which have been conducted about consumers' response to and thoughts on colours, so it is crucial you do some research before designing, or asking someone else to design. You may also want to consider cultural differences and the market you are selling to as colours can represent different things to different cultures.

It is also often the case that different industries will have a certain look or colour palette they will stick to. For example, an insurance company will want to instil confidence, and so a sober and reliable scheme of cooler colours like greens and blues will be appropriate. Sites that are about fun or fashion will probably benefit from a louder, more aggressive colour scheme of reds, oranges or purples. Sites dealing with home and family issues often benefit from calming pastel shades - the list goes on, and it's worth trying out several colour schemes with test visitors to see which is the most effective and pleasing. 

How to Avoid Colour Clashes

As well as choosing a limited range of colours, you need to make sure they all work together without causing potential migraines in your site visitors. Fortunately, this is a very well researched subject, and there are plenty of pre-developed colour palettes available online, ready to plug into your graphic design software (or alternatively, to pass on to your web development company). Some standard ranges of colours have been proven over time to work well together, so keep your eyes open for a scheme you see that seems like it would be effective for your business, and try visiting one of the many colour palette collection sites and looking for existing palettes that could be put to a similar use. There is even software available that can take a pleasing photograph and analyse the colours used to provide a palette that can be adapted to your web design efforts which can be a useful way to create a potential colour scheme.

Steal Ideas From Competitors and Pinterest

Another way to get inspiration for your colour-scheme is to analyse and steal good ideas from your competitors. We have already mentioned how different industries will largely have a 'norm' and it may work to your advantage to create similar palette to instil a sense of familiarity and trust with potential customers. If you are thinking of doing this however, you must make sure to not directly copy as you will want to create your own brand identity.

Pinterest can also offer another great source for finding colour schemes, logo ideas and website designs - a simple search brings up numerous results. If you are going to employ a graphic designer to create a logo then bringing some visual representations of your ideas can be very helpful and using Pinterest provides a free and easy way to do this.

Still Feeling Overwhelmed? Kommand Website Builder Can Help

However you go about choosing a suitable colour palette for your business, always bear in mind the importance of the first impression, and take notice of the designs we see all around us which have had vast amounts of testing done on them - there's plenty to learn that you can apply to your own business web site, however big or small.

If you are still finding the process overwhleming, or lack the time or resources to research colour schemes, then an alternative option may be to use a website builder which includes pre-made themes to pick from.

With Kommand website builder, business owners can easily create their own websites without having any programming knowledge or graphic design experience. Better still all of our themes are optimised for mobile an important factor in today's online market and prices start from as little as £9 per month. To find out more visit our tour page.

Bearing this in mind, is there any point in paying hundreds or thousands to get a website for your small business's website? Only you can answer this, but before you decide it's worth considering using a website builder.

Why Use a Website Builder?

Putting together a website in the traditional way means either learning to code yourself, or paying a web design company to build the site for you. Both can be expensive, the first one in terms of time and paying for tools, and the second one in terms of paying fees that can quickly escalate beyond your planned budget. A website builder aims to overcome these difficulties, providing simple-to-use tools to create a website for your company yourself. But what should you be looking at when deciding whether to use one?

Cost

Many builders advertise themselves as free, only to provide extremely limited functionality without paying to upgrade to a premium addition. In short, few free tools will provide high quality results, so you're looking at paying one way or another. Some builders charge a monthly fee, so make sure to consider this when working out your budget, as if you're planning your site to be around for a while these fees can mount up, and it might be better to find a builder that charges a one-off fee.

Ease of Use

The whole point of using a builder is that it's quick and easy with no expert knowledge required. If you find that using the demo of a builder is confusing or overly complicated, then look elsewhere - if you're going to have to learn a lot to get your site up and running, you may be better investing your time in learning a more flexible stand-alone web design package.

Customisation Options

The free templates offered by most builders can look extremely formulaic and even unprofessional. Your company website is your representation online, and you want to make a good impression. If the builder forces you to use unprofessional or inappropriate designs then move on and try a different one. Also consider whether one of the built-in templates is designed specifically for your line of business - some templates are geared towards photography services, for example.

Hosting

Once you've built your site, you're going to need to put it somewhere on the web if your customers are going to find it. Most builders include some sort of hosting deal, but if possible look for one which also allows you to choose your own host and domain name. This will give you the flexibility you need if the supplied hosting isn't up to scratch, and also gives your site more room to grow and mature in the future.

Advanced Features

On today's web, there are two vital considerations if you want your website to be found and used by customers: SEO and mobile responsiveness. The first of these involves making sure your website is properly readable by search engines so that you can be found, and a good builder will provide the basic tools you need such as the ability to set keywords and custom page titles.

Mobile responsiveness means making sure that your site looks equally good on a smartphone or tablet as it does on a desktop computer, and while the technical details of this can be very complicated, a good builder should includes this feature by default so it's not something you have to worry about.

Kommand.me Website Builder

If you're looking to conduct business online, then there's no substitute for a professionally designed website, but if you want to test the waters with a simple site then a website builder could be the easy solution you're looking for. 

Kommand has over 350 websites across the UK, Europe and the Middle East with new websites being created every week. We offer website packages from as little as £9 per month and all of our themes are fully responsive, allowing you to grab mobile users' attention. We offer a free 30 day trial so why not try today and find out how easy it can be creating a website for your business? Or, if you would prefer to speak to someone about how Kommand could help you then you can contact us to discuss your business's needs. 

Shopping cart abandonment is a one of the big challenges faced by eCommerce businesses and one you should strive to understand in order to improve sales and ROI. There are many reasons why consumers might abandon their shopping cart which in turn have a number of associated areas for improvements. Your eCommerce website may have great design, great functionality and competitive prices but if you still lose a large majority of potential customers at check-out, then your website has ultimately failed to convert.

Why Do Consumers Abandon Their Online Shopping Carts?

You may think that your customers are not following through on their purchases because they are not ready to spend their money. However, studies have found that the number one reason for abandoning online purchases is in fact unexpected costs. Many customers become annoyed by undisclosed shipping and handling costs which they can only see before they finalise their purchase.

Customers may also abandon their cart due to more practical usability problems, including your website crashing, running slowly, overly complicated check-out processes or restricted payment options.

It may also be the case that your customers abandon their cart as they want to compare their options. Some may look for coupons and discounts with competitors and will shop around to compare initial cost, delivery options and associated costs before making an informed purchasing decision. This process is known as digital window shopping and has as experienced an increase due to the number of  comparison websites and the lack of pressure that comes with online shopping. This means there is an increased chance that your customers will compare and look elsewhere – especially with high involvement purchases such as electronics.

5 Tips to Help Your Business Lower Cart Abandonment

1. Be Transparent: 

Show your delivery options and shipping costs at the beginning or offer free or reduced shipping for purchases over a certain value.

2. Re-think Registration:

86% of consumers do not like having to sign up and sign in to make a purchase with registration pages stopping 58.1% moving forward with their purchase. This is either because customers do not want to waste time signing in or they cannot remember their e-mail and password. In order to combat this it might be beneficial to include the traditional sign-up/sign-in options but also offer an option to checkout as a guest as well. Alternatively, you can offer your customers the option of a social log-in, that is logging in through a social media platform. This helps reduce the time between wanting and buying since the customer generally only has to click one button to register.

Of course with these options you will need to make some sacrifices. Social log-ins will put some customers off as they do not like to share their personal information, and guest check-in will lead to a increase in sales but a decrease in future leads. You should experiment with the options to see what works best for your business, or if possible offer a variety of log-in options to ensure you capture all of your potential customers.

3. Safe and Secure Check-Out: 

If a customer is unfamiliar with your brand they may be more wary when carrying out a purchase. By including secure payment options and integrating 3rd party software you can help reassure your customers that your business is legitimate.

4. Show Customer Support/Contact Information: 

It may the case that your customer is having difficult with a part of their check-out process or that they want to ask a question. By including contact details and FAQ alongside your shopping basket and check-out you can help ensure your customers' queries are answered.

5. Email Recovery Campaigns: 

Dependent on your business you may also want to follow up purchases with email marketing. If you have gathered a customer's email address before they abandoned their shopping cart and they have allowed you to contact them then your business may benefit from abandoned cart emails that remind them of their purchase. Studies have shown these to be highly effective forms of communications with nearly half of all emails sent open and a third of clicks leading to sales. If you are thinking of carrying out email recovery campaigns then you will need to construct an effective email which will convince the customer to purchase. Such reassurance might be through including reviews or testimonials, refund policies, discount code or indicating limited stock.

Cart abandonment can cost you lots in lost revenue. It is important that you find ways to overcome the problems customers face and make the check-out process as simple as possible. Doing so will help you recover sales, improve your conversion rates and build a database of customers.

Technology can help your SME from its inception, through the difficult establishment years to a position of stability five to ten years down the line. Harnessing technology is important and learning the right ways to utilise it in your SME business can save you money and time.

Why Is Technology Important for Your SME?

Last year there were 5.2M businesses in the UK, of which 99% were SMEs (businesses which employ 1 - 250 people). Micro-businesses are businesses which employ less than 9 people and these alone generated 33% of UK employment and 19% of turnover.

The increase in the number of start-ups has been accredited to developments in technology, one of which being the simplification of processes required to get a business started. And, with computer processing speeds doubling every 18 months, the trend is only set to continue making starting a business seem very attractive on one hand but increasingly competitive and difficult on the other.

Technology as an SME Enabler

Technology has allowed certain businesses to operate from anywhere, controlling their business over the internet without any need for office rental. The Internet has also become a useful tool for providing free marketing and advertising solutions and advice to SMEs about everything from finance to SEO. Technology has developed from being a tool that businesses simply use to perform admin functions to fully expansive business enablers. Technology is at the core of many business’s strategies; both SMEs and larger organisations.

The Introduction of the Cloud

Cloud-based technologies and services have also helped the growth of start-ups and SMEs. Cloud technologies allow SMEs to utilise similar, sometimes even the same, services as their larger competitors. This has helped to level out the playing field and in some instances has even seen SMEs gain an edge over larger, more established organisations. These technologically savvy businesses are dubbed the world’s digital natives.

Cloud technologies can help you outsource some of your business functions which will reduce your costs. Examples include online storage systems, back office solutions and social media.

Maintaining Your Competitive Edge

SMEs have the ability to adapt faster to technology advances and changes in market conditions than their larger competitors. They are not shackled with outdated practices meaning it is much easier from them to adopt the latest technologies. Furthermore, as SMEs have a smaller workforce, it is much easier to ensure all staff are understanding and coping with the new technologies quickly and efficiently.

Social Media and Your SME’s Website

Often SMEs have a lack of resources so being able to capitalise on free networks, such as social media, can help improve your small businesses’ ability to compete in your market. Social media tools can be beneficial to your business as they do not require large capital expenditure from your marketing budget. Operating social media channels for your SME can help you to build awareness, customer and client relations and can even aid your market research. Some studies have even shown that small businesses are more likely to succeed with social media channels than their ‘more powerful’ larger competitors.

Lastly, technology has opened the doors for potential brand awareness due to the ability to have a business website. These can benefit you in a number of ways, from allowing you to produce content that increases your businesses credibility to even changing the way you sell and trade via an online eCommerce website.

How Can Kommand.me Help Your Small Business?

If you have your own business and are looking for a website then the Kommand.me team can help. We have a range of mobile responsive, SEO friendly web design packages with prices starting from as little as £9 a month. See our tour for more information.

What Should Your Small Business Website Include?

Depending on the type of business you run your website may have a variety of different functions from user guides to an online shop. Your website should however have a number of fundamental elements that will help customers to understand who you are, what you offer and the message your business conveys.

Clearly Describe Your Business

When someone visits your webpage they should immediately understand what your business does. Use your homepage to clearly define the business name and sum up the products or services on offer. You should try and attract the visitor's attention immediately by showing how your business solves the problem they have been searching for. It is important to remember that whilst you know what your business does inside out, your potential customer probably will not. 

Pick a Simple Web Address

A short, simple web address will be much easier for visitors to remember and will result in less typos. Make sure to secure your domain name before you begin making your website as a change in URL can result in a loss of customers and can damage your brand image. When buying your domain name you should also look to purchase it for the long term e.g. 10 years. This can further help your SEO efforts as spam websites tend to only be registered for a year or two.

Make Your Website Responsive 

It was recently reported that more searches were carried out on mobile devices than on desktop computers. The data provided by Google shows this to be true for 10 countries including the US and Japan. This evidence proves the importance of making your website mobile responsive (easily viewed on a mobile device) to ensure you do not lose these customers.

Don't Forget Contact Information

You should ensure that your website clearly shows ways in which customers can contact you. This could be through forms on each webpage or a seperate webpage or a combination of both. Remember that each time a customer contacts you this could be a potential lead so it is important you make the process of contacting you a simple one.

Include Testimonials and Content

It is important that you build credibility into your business. One way of doing this is to include customer testimonials. Customer testimonials use one of the most influencial marketing tools - word of mouth - to promote your business. You may also look to include a review page so customers can how others experienced your product or service. Alternatively you can build credibility into your website by convincing the visitor you are an expert in your field. This could be through including accreditations or by creating content such as a blog or user-guides. Regularly updating your content will also help to improve your website's SEO (the ability to rank highly on search engines).

How Can Kommand.me Help?

Kommand offer an easy way to build, manage and promote your website. Our professional themes can be adapted to suit your business and our advanced features allow you to get on with running your business without having to worry about the technical issues of building or running a website.

We offer a FREE 30 day trial so why not try today and find out how easy it can be having a website for your business?

What Should You Include on Your Homepage?

Your homepage, like all pages on your website, should follow a number of design rules. Your logo should be clearly seen and coherent across all pages and the design, colour scheme and background should be in-keeping with the company image. You should also be aware of the size and amount of images you include. If your homepage has a lot of data to download then the page load speed will decrease and consumers may click away instead of waiting for it to load.

Other design elements that will help you to build an effective homepage include the inclusion of a search bar. If you are an eCommerce business you may also include a shopping cart symbol to show that you sell online. Your navigation bar should be clear, consistent and link to important pages such as Contact, Products or Blog.

All of these elements should be tested when building your site. To capture an audience in 2015, it is also becoming expected that your website will be mobile responsive that is, viewable on mobile devices without pinching. All of these design elements combined will help improve your user’s experience.

What Content Should You Include on Your Homepage?

As well as design details it is also important to think about your Homepage’s functionality and content. Your homepage should always include your most important content. As this is the first point of call for many users it is important that you offer the visitor something worthwhile and provide a solution to the query they had in mind when clicking on your page.

When writing the content for your homepage you should try and keep it brief and to the point. If your visitor leaves wondering why they visited your site then your website has not accomplished its purpose. You should always keep the business’s and user’s objectives in mind when putting together your Homepage. Many users will want to find out what you offer quickly. Adding links can help navigate a visitor quickly to the section they require.

It is also a good idea to update you Homepage with current content as and when it is required. Updated websites will be indexed more frequently, which will improve your SEO and will help to build consumer confidence in your brand and products.

For more information on how to create an effective About Me page click here, or if you would like to find out more about Kommand built websites then please contact us.

Creating a sound navigation and linking structure will also have a positive effect on your site’s user experience as they will easily be able to find the information they require.

How Can You Improve Your Website’s Navigation and Links?

You may find it difficult to understand how to structure your internal link flow and miss out on the improvement that this relatively minor effort will result in. However by following a few steps you can improve your site’s navigation, SEO and user experience at the same time.

Design a User-Friendly Navigation Menu

One of the most common complaints people have when visiting a website is that they cannot find what they are looking for. If your website is inefficient, badly sign-posted or complicated customers will become frustrated and will tend to click away.

To combat this, your website should include a main menu with sub-headings if they are required. Within your menu you should link to your most important pages such as Home, About and Contact to make sure users can find what they are looking for.

Create Accurate Navigation Titles and Link Titles

Visitors to your website will typically have an idea of what a page will include before they click on it. You should ensure your navigation and link titles are descriptive and not cryptic or misleading. If your website has clickable images you should change the ALT text to a description so that you users know where the image links to even if the image does not load.

Keep Your Navigation and Link Titles Consistent

Your navigation should always be consistent in both where and how it appears on your site. Doing so will help promote ease of use. If you change your navigation from page to page you visitor may lose their bearings, leading to customer frustration.

Strength in Branding

Regardless of how a visitor ends up on your website they need to know which site they are on. Using consistent branding across all your site’s pages can significantly help people do this. Consistent branding refers to more than just a logo, it means using the same fonts, colours and web design. When your site’s pages are widely different users will be confused when they navigate to a different page as to whether they are still on your website or not.

How Can Kommand Help You?

Kommand.me offers an easy, cost-effective and fast way to build your mobile-responsive website. Our user-friendly design templates can be customised to suit your business’s branding and style. We also offer a range of packages with add-ons allowing you to pay for what you need. For more information, get in touch today.

UK small and medium businesses can unlock £18.8bn in revenues in the digital economy. Yet, UK businesses have been slow to act - only 13% of businesses with websites transact online. In the 2014 alone, the average online weekly spend was £718.7m, an increase of 12% compared with 2013. UK small businesses must fully capitalise on consumer demand as it continues exponentially. A digital skills report released by Lloyds Banking Group in partnership with digital skills charity Go ON UK has revealed about 1.2m small and medium sized businesses lack basic digital skills. About 23% of UK businesses function without a website. Their existing customers and suppliers cannot transact online. More importantly, such businesses don't have access to thousands of new customers.

UK Digital Skills Development

A quarter of all organisations believe digital technology is irrelevant to their core business, with three-quarters not investing time and money in developing digital skills such as setting up a website or switching to online banking. The UK digital charity Go ON UK runs programs to improve digital skills. The region of greatest digital development has been the north-west, up nine points against two points nationally. At the lower end of the digital adoption, is the north-east, which has in the last 12 months increased its digital maturity by eight points. The digital economy accounts for over 8% of UK GDP, yet organisations have failed to take advantage, by improving their digital skills.

Digital Adoption UK businesses and Charities

UK charities have fared even worse than businesses - 53% of UK charities operate without digital skills, with a negative impact on funding. Charities with the least developed digital skills were uncertain if websites or social media could assist in raising funds. The number of charities with basic digital skills fell by 6,000 from 45% to 42%, which showed a continuing apathy towards acquiring and improving digital skills. Within a year, 100,000 small businesses out of 5.2m have acquired basic digital skills, increasing from 75% to 77%. Although many UK businesses have established a digital presence, many are still resistant to the advantages that a website can offer.

How can Kommand.me platform help your business?

Kommand.me has been developed by the web developers and designers from the UK. The platform offers mobile responsive and SEO friendly templates that rank on the search engine giants such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. You can easily build your own website using drop and drag menu or our team can build it for you. We have a range of packages for various business needs and requirements. The prices start from as little as £9 a month to £25 a month. You are not tided into any contract and can cancel any time. The platform provides you with a a range of features and is available in 9 different languages including Chinese, Russian, Spanish and Polish.

Kommand.me offers a brilliant start-up platform for SME’s of various industries. If you are looking for a website contact our team and see how we can help you grow.

If you have owned a website for quite some time you may decide to give it an overhaul and redesign it so it is more up to date, have a more modern look and is ranking higher on Google. If your website is not mobile responsive or SEO friendly you might need to rethink your digital brand strategy.

These days having an online presence provides a hub for most of your lead generation and marketing efforts. Therefore, lead generation should be at the forefront of any redesign ideas. Think about your redesign along with your goals and ask how your online presence will support these goals.

Is your website SEO friendly?

During the course of your website's lifetime you will have built up valuable assets for SEO, such as content, blogs, keywords and inbound links. It is vital to protect these during the redesign process.

It is a good practice to keep a keyword and content inventory, record your average monthly bounce rate, record the number of inbound linking domains, record the total number of pages indexed and the amount of visits/traffic/leads generated. Google Analytics will help you gather all of this information together and give you better insight into your site's performance.

What is the next stage for your website’s re-development?

Once you have done all your research and gathered together all the information you should create a website redesign plan, which will become the blueprint for your website redesign project.

This blueprint should include website navigation. Each webpage should focus on one core topic or keyword. If you map your ideas out you can generate solid site navigation that will improve your visitor user experience and reduce website's bounce rate.

After you have created a site navigation map it is well worth mocking-up each page. These wireframes are essentially the blueprints for your new site. Each page should show where the navigation, header images, content and calls-to-action will appear on the page.

Kommand.me platform offers stunning user friendly website design templates. All you need to do is choose a specific web frame for your brand and add content, logos, photos and videos. It is important to start creating content during the planning phase of the new site design. You can plug this new content directly into your wireframes. By doing this you can test the new content within the design and ensure that it fits into the user experience so visitors can flow through your new site easily.

Kommand.me is easy, cost effective and fast way to build your website and make it mobile responsive immediately. What are you waiting for? Contact us and start building your website today!

We've all seen them, websites which are so confusing we can't figure out how to navigate around them. Our eyes are scanning an overcrowded page looking for that piece of information which was promised. How long do you give yourself before you close the page? A minute? Seconds?

Well, you're not alone. Nowadays, not many people will tolerate a poorly designed, or slow, website. Instead, your potential customers want answers to their problems fast and if they can't find what they're looking for, they won't hang about. 

Stop Putting Off Potential Customers

A confusing or poorly designed website could result in you throwing potential conversions and money away. It doesn't matter how great your information or offering is, without a logical and well-presented site, your potential customers will be more likely to leave your website and, more likely to end up choosing one of your competitors.

To avoid that inevitability, let's look at the key mistakes websites make and how you can avoid them. Remember, the longer people are on your site, the more chance you have to convert them into a paying customer, either online (if you are Ecommerce) or offline.

Mistake 1: Hard to Read Font

You may have exactly the information the visitor is looking for but if they can't read it, they'll leave. Avoid this happening by selecting an easy to read font. Bear in mind that some fonts may show differently on different computer if the system hasn’t got the font installed. You should consider the importance of text colour to background. If using a light background use a dark text. If you have a dark background use a light coloured text. The size of the font needs to be easy to read.

Mistake 2: Too Many Distractions

Take an honest appraisal of your site. Is it clean cut, and streamline or is it full of blocks of ads, random photos or text? Don't allow your site to become too artsy with out of place graphics. This is your businesses presence on the web, it's a virtual business card or brochure, nothing more.
Consider the less is more approach to make it user friendly. Yes you want to show ads or items your customer would benefit from but don't bombard them with too much at one time. Giving people too much choice has proven to make it more difficult to make a decision. Keep them on your page with an easy to use design and layout. Let them get comfortable and then sell to them.

Mistake 3: Your Website Isn’t Mobile Friendly

If you analyse the data about visitors to your site, you'll know the amount of people using mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, is increasing rapidly. It is naïve to think that they will always revert back to a fixed location so you need to ensure your site is mobile friendly. View your site on a portable device to ensure it is as sharp and easy to use as it is on a laptop or P.C. If not it is time to make some changes.

Mistake 4: The Images on Your Website Are Poor Quality or Generic

We live in a visual society and people love websites which have high quality, preferably original images. These images need to reach out and grab your viewer and encourage them to read more and stay on your page longer.

Consider imagery in all aspects of your website. If you are going to include banners on your pages make sure they reflect your brand image, or your services.

Need Some Help Upgrading Your Website?

If you are looking to get your website up to scratch in 2016 then Kommand might be the product to help. We offer a range of packages and themes if you want to design and build your website yourself, or can build you a custom design that fits your company image for a reasonable price. For more information please contact us:

Email: support@kommand.me

Glasgow: 0141 345 2130

Middlesbrough: 01642 989 069

London: 0203 026 0730

Are you satisfied with your website's performance? 

The internet is everywhere, from your laptop, to your smartphone, and even your television, internet access is becoming bigger than ever before. National statistics demonstrate that 38 million adults in the UK had internet access in 2014 which is a significant growth from 2006 when 14.26 million used the internet.

In today's world, more people than ever have their own website, whether they have a personal blog, a website for their business, or even something to talk about their hobbies. We will examine a few ways how to help attract more visitors to your website, how to encourage to view more than just the home page, and how to encourage visitors to return to your website.

Why does content on your website matter?

Web developers work hard to maximise the load times of your website and improve SEO, and that is because visitors are generally impatient. If the purpose of your website is not readily obvious within a few seconds, or if the page takes more than a few seconds to load, then chances are that the visitor will 'bounce', which is the technical term meaning the visitors leaves your site without looking at any other page.

Which techniques can help to increase conversion rates?

Think of when you visit a website, only a small portion of it is visible until you scroll down. This visible portion is a prime real estate space, and a few simple modifications can help draw in your visitors and encourage them to stick around.

Kommand.me offers brilliant website templates that are SEO and user friendly. If you are looking to improve your website’s conversion rates and general performance try out Kommand.me platform and watch your website’s traffic grow.

Good use of SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the driving force behind any good websites, and there are even companies springing up everywhere to offer that service. The truth is, SEO is fairly simple, but it is time consuming and can only get you so far. Proper use of HTML tags in a hierarchical manner, as well as using meta-tags, meta-descriptions and sitemaps can help Google boost your website. But bear in mind, good SEO alone won't get you to Google's number one spot.

The name of your business or the purpose of your website should be visible within the 'real estate' space. Try not to make it too abstract, keep it simple. If your visitors have to spend ages looking through your website to see what you have to offer, then you have to re-evaluate your message.

Good copywriting will help you get your point across more succinctly, not only that, but good copywriting on your website will be full of keywords to help you out with your SEO.

What about link building and social media?

Network and get your website out there and become visible. If you can get people talking about your website, great. The more relevant backlinks you get (having your website linked on other websites) the better, as you have more of a web presence, which will again help you with your search engine rankings.

Social media is getting bigger. If you offer a service or a product, getting the word out on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or Pinterest will help you become more visible to potential customers and partners.

How to Find the Most Popular Keywords?

Determine the top five keywords your potential customers are likely to use when searching for your product or service. Find at least five words that best describe the domain and then create combinations. Place descriptive words in pairs or add suffixes and prefixes to create a descriptive domain name that best suits your business. You can use Google AdWords Planner to determine the most popular and powerful keywords for your business industry.

Is Your Domain Name Original and Unique?

Do several searches to ensure that your chosen domain name is innovative and unique but still describes your product or service. You don't want your site to be confused with a competitor's website. Avoid replicating domain names with alternate spellings, plurals or hyphenated versions of existing domain names of companies selling the same products. Your customers could be led to their website instead of yours.

Why Choose Dot-Com?

Opt for a .com domain name rather than a .net or .org website name. This is important over the long term if you want to drive traffic, build your brand or ensure name recognition.

Keep it Short and Easy to Remember

Opt for a domain name that is easy to recall, even when it's not at hand, easy to search for and easy to type. Avoid alternative spellings of common words.

What does it Say?

When reading or hearing your domain name it should be possible to guess what your business sells or the service it provides. It's important to ensure that your domain name is as descriptive as possible. Names like Autotrader, Hotmail and WebMD are perfect examples of this. Ensure that you're not violating another company's copyright with your domain name.

Kommand.me team can help you to select a powerful domain name and assist you in obtaining it.

Contact us today and find out more.

Why does your business need a website?

Despite these figures many small businesses in the UK are yet to adjust their strategies in order to retain and improve these impressive growth rates. According to research findings published in the Guardian, 60% of small business in the UK do not have any online presence. The main reason for this is that a lot of small business owners see their businesses at an offline entity and thus stick to conventional marketing and promotion methods. This is a very risky strategy to take as more and more people are doing their shopping for all kinds of items online. No matter how well established a business is in terms of a customer base, online presence is becoming increasingly important.

What are the advantages of having a website?

There are several advantages of online presence. One is that a business remains accessible to existing and potential clients 24/7. Business that offer online shopping never close down. Customers are online way before stores open and after they close and aligning marketing and sales strategies with this reality makes a big difference to the bottom line. When customer's mind is not yet made up about a purchase, the information they find online may sway them towards putting an item in the cart.

Online presence also makes it possible for a business to create strong local presence. This is especially true for small businesses that rely on locals who buy from their shops. Such businesses mostly rely on word-of-mouth marketing for new or repeat customers. However, businesses that wish to launch out beyond local borders can use online presence to do so. Consumers tend to search for various products and services on search engines rather than walking around the town, so getting a brochure website might be a great strategic move if you would like to target wider customer base.

In addition to having a website, a small business can also make sure they are seen on local directories and other platforms that locals would go to search for particular businesses, products and shop locations. Businesses can also network with others for the mutual benefit of both.

How social media can help to promote your business?

Online presence also offers the advantage of sharing tools to promote themselves extensively. All social media tools have share buttons that make it possible to share information and products at the click of a button.

When you create a website with Kommand.me you can easily share the content from your website on social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+. This can do a lot for a local business as people generally tend to trust information from a friend or relative. A business can also use social media to get feedback about their products and services. This helps to improve the quality of their products or services and grow the business. It’s also easy to handle complains immediately and demonstrate that they care about the welfare of their customers.

How can we help you?

In conclusion, big impact cannot be achieved only through big budget marketing. Online presence is very affordable and easy to maintain. For example, Kommand.me offers SEO and user friendly websites from as little as £9 a month. We have designed a number of professional websites for a variety of businesses in UK including hotels, restaurants, health services, dental companies, hairdressers and cake bakers.

We really enjoy working with entrepreneurs from around the country and being able to help them achieve their business goals.

If you have a business or just a business idea contact our team and see how we can help you grow your business online.

The fluidity and energy of the start-up boom is starting to gain real headway in Britain. Recent figures have emerged that clearly show the country is in the midst of a rapidly changing marketplace in regards to online platforms and website strategy. 2014 was a record breaking year in terms of new start-ups in Britain being created, and this dynamic force looks all set to continue.

Capturing the Potential of an Effective Website for New Businesses

Linked in to this drive for original business ventures and first time traders is the knowledge that a high-performance website is absolutely essential. As well as a smartly created platform where potential customers can find out everything they need to know about a new start-up, a fully in-tune website offers retailers the option to advertise and trade in the most effective manner. Over 500,000 new businesses were formed in the UK during 2014. The majority of these will be sure to investigate the primary options for fulfilling their online potential and creating a rewarding web savvy marketing campaigns. A professionally developed and conceived online portal can often be the difference between lasting success and fleeting interest. Thankfully for new start-ups, the scenario of an affordable and strongly performing online business structure no longer needs to be a fantasy.

Our team of highly experienced web designers and developers have created an affordable website building platform for SME’s and entrepreneurs. We offer a fully responsive and SEO friendly website templates from as little as £9 a month. You can build it yourself or for a small fee we can build it for you. Simply pick a template you like the most and start designing today!

Harnessing Technology for Online Retail

New online technology has created a far more solid base for entrepreneurs keen to begin a new start-up business. The essentials can be undertaken quicker and cheaper than was ever possible in the past, and this ease of use has led a brilliant array of talent to express their original plans for trade and commerce.

The entrepreneurial spirit of Britain can be well harnessed by a smoothly operated website and support structure. By showcasing exactly what a new business is able to do, a sophisticated site can be the perfect trade tool for developers seeking a clear way around a busy marketplace. As a means to sourcing new trade and ever-more customers, it is a fundamental source of hard-working communications, original ideas and energised commercial activity.

Kommand.me support team is always here to help you and answer any questions you may have about designing a new website.

1. Focus On High-Quality Content

A site is just as good as the quality of its content, and posting well-written, original articles and tutorials that will benefit the reader is paramount. Avoid making the common mistake of copying blocks of text from other sites or blogs, as this will only determine Google to penalise yours. If Google detects plagiarized content on your site, not only will it lower the overall ranking, but it will also take its toll on the site's position in SERP (search engine results pages).

It is also recommended to write for your readers, not for the Google crawlers - do not try to insert keywords where they do not fit, and avoid keyword stuffing at all costs. Also, make sure to double check your spelling and grammar, as the latest Google algorithms are designed to analyse not only the originality of the text, but also its quality.

2. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

If you have some web design skills, then you surely know how important responsive web design is. Simply put, this type of design will make your personal site more versatile, thus allowing visitors to access it not only from their laptops, but also from their tablets or smartphones. This is a Google-friendly move that will also increase the traffic to your site in the long haul. Also, make sure that the HTML and the CSS are both properly validated, and that both the images and the scripts are optimised for mobile users.

Did you know that all of the Kommand templates are mobile optimised? We aim to deliver the best web practice tools to make your website technologically advanced and customer friendly. Kommand enables you to build your own website using the most innovative web techniques without any technological or code knowledge. You can easily build your site within a day and showcase your talents, services or products on the World Wide Web.

3. Google Analytics Is Your New Best Friend

Google Analytics is a handy application designed to track your site visitors, and it will help you if you decide to either start an online marketing campaign for increasing the visibility of your website, or if you decide to monetize it with, say, Google AdWords.

4. Make Sure Your Website Is SEO-Friendly

Last, but surely not least, another aspect of utmost importance is to make sure that your blog or site is search engine optimised. If you do this, Google will place it higher in the search engine results page (thus leading to an increase in the number of monthly visitors). Yet again Kommand guides you through the search engine optimization process pointing out which fields need to be filed whilst building your website.

There are two main types of SEO: on-site (keyword optimisation, Meta tags and descriptions, metadata, XML sitemaps or reciprocal linking) and off-site (content-generated link building, guest posting, site reviews or social media sharing).

There are several notable SEO techniques that you can use, even if you are not familiar with the topic. In addition to posting high-quality content, you should also consider guest posting (posting comments and entries on other sites or blogs from your niche), reciprocal linking, content marketing, social media promotion and such.
If you would like to have your own website try Kommand.me building tool and design your website today!

There can be little doubt these days that a strongly functioning website is essential to business. This holds true for both well established companies and small businesses looking to find a unique place in their field of work and in the minds of their consumers. Small businesses and entrepreneurs need to always keep in mind the importance of their particular website. It is fundamental in projecting the aims and identity of a company to the world at large. For this reason, every step should be taken to create a high performance online presence. 

How to connect with your market through a well-designed website?

A working knowledge of the intricacies and nuances of the World Wide Web have become ever more vital in connecting with a marketplace. In these days of online shopping and consumerism, often the first thing a potential customer will do is check for their needed services or goods on-line. This fact, allied to the need for a strong marketing foundation, can make a smooth online base a great starting point for any new business. It is also necessary to keep a site constantly updated with news, features and offers as often as possible. A site that goes unchanged for weeks on end will be for many web users a sure sign of a faltering business. Business owners that keep these logical facts in mind can experience all the benefits of a connected audience and market. 

Taking a professional approach to Website Design

A well designed website can greatly assist in providing a company with a strong image and public perception. A striking homepage built on well-grounded text and image is the first place to start. Studies have shown that potential customers usually formulate an opinion of a site after just a few seconds of visiting. The homepage is therefore essential! The utilisation and incorporation of features and items such as video, messaging services and social media updates through LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can also transform a potential customer base. An understanding of search engine techniques can also be of great benefit in making a site truly work. SEO techniques such as the use of keywords flagged up by Google and other major search engines can assist in pushing a site higher up the search engine rankings. In today's increasingly online world, a company without a strong on-line presence and a good understanding of what makes the internet tick cannot realistically expect to succeed.

Why choose Kommand?

Kommand is a perfect website building tool that enables you to edit your content, offers and promotions 24 hours a day. It gives you the perfect tools to optimize your website on all search engines and offers a mobile friendly version of the website. You can build your own website from as little as £15 a month or have it built for you by choosing one of our Turnkey packages. 

Kommand enables all size businesses to create their own online presence at affordable prices and develop exciting brand marketing strategies online. If you are looking for a website simply pick a mobile responsive website template and start creating your website right away.

The pervasive power of the internet in today's society makes it an excellent tool to build your business, attract potential customers and connect with people from all over the globe. However, with millions of websites in cyberspace, you need to properly harness the potential of the internet in order to make your website attractive and easy to navigate for visitors. There are several key tips to follow in order to make this possible.

1. Integrating your Logo

Your business logo is the key identifier of your company. As such, you need to make sure that you have a high-resolution image of your logo clearly identifiable on each page of your website. Many websites choose to hyperlink the logo directly back to the homepage, so users can easily navigate back in one click. 

2. Be Professional in Colour and Font Designs

You want to project to potential customers that you are a competent and professional business. As such, you need to be careful in choosing your colour palette - neutral colours are ideal, with occasional splashes of colour to highlight important information - but make sure that there are no garish colours that will put visitors off. The same can be said for font designs: select traditional fonts like Times New Roman or Arial, and keep the size no larger than 11 or 12 pt. You need to remember that a lot of people are now accessing websites through their smart phones, where font sizes are scaled differently, and large fonts are harder to read and navigate. 

3. Use Graphics Wisely 

A page with nothing but a block of text will not strike visitors as particularly interesting. Humans are visual beings, so implement the use of a few choice photos that project the ethos and aim of the business. It's advisable to take your own photos, or purchase stock photos. Don't simply use images found on Google, as customers will be able to tell if an image has been lazily incorporated. Furthermore, don't overload the page with images, as visitors don't want their attention pulled in too many directions. 

Following these simple tips should ensure that you have a website with a professional look and feel, attracting potential customers and increasing your business potential.

Build your website today!

Pick a template and start building your own professional website today. All of the Kommand templates are mobile and SEO friendly which means that your website will be highly ranked on Google and your visitors will be able to view your website on mobile, tablet and desktop. 

Few months ago, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Internet - the World Wide Web, probably the most important invention of the 20th century. In 1989, a single machine designed by a software engineer Sir Tim, working at CERN facility in Switzerland turned into a global network of computers, laptops, tablets, PCs, smart phones and many more upcoming devices. The invention of the Internet changed the behaviours of an entire generation; from consumers to companies and marketers to advertisers.

Today, the most substantial resource of any company is its website. Initially, the web pages of companies looked like more or less as an encyclopedia entry. Companies told people who they are, what they do and where they are. But in the recent years, companies realised that a website is the most effective way to communicate with the customers. Web pages are implemented with powerful B2C and B2B tools; including online sales and purchasing, secure business sites, vendor services, ordering and many more.

All these developments steered companies to re-evaluate their websites. Actually this re-evaluation today is continuous: you should follow the most recent trends in web design and monitor its competitors to be constantly up to date. But before that, you should know the basic rules of modern web design and some simple tips to conduct a better business. These rules are twofold: appearance and content.

Enhance your image. Appearance is important!

Different research suggests that you have only five seconds to impress your audience when they enter your website. You need to connect with the customer right away, and the best way to do this is using a professional and engaging design. The images you use have to be imposing and the general design should be pleasing to the eye. 

The Internet is speeding every passing day and you should take advantage of this. You should use videos to tell what your business is doing and how it does what it's doing, since video watching is the new trend on the Internet. Lastly on this section, know the habits of your customers. Today people spend a lot of time on the Internet while travelling around; so you should make your website friendly with smart phones and tablet PCs.

Kommand gives you a perfect platform for creating stunning websites. It delivers the best web practice tools that provides you with the mobile ready and SEO friendly websites. You can easily create and edit your own beautiful website. 

Content is still the King. Be informative.

Don't ever forget that the Internet is alive! You must keep your webpage up-to-date. The new face of your company is your web site. Otherwise, with outdated content, people will think that your business is inactive. And be visible. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial to capture organic web traffic, which will lead to new customers and better sales. Use monitoring devices and see where do you get the most traffic and use this information in your business strategy.

In addition, you need to use proper messaging. The messages have to be clear, short and concise. Make sure that you are using CTAs, namely Call-to-Action, the buttons directing people to certain business activities. Last but not least, incorporate social media. Today, the best way to build customer loyalty and to be in touch with customers is to use social media. You will notice that sometimes, they sell your business even better than you!

Looking for a new website?

If you are considering building a new website or re-designing the existing one Kommand can offer you the best web practice platform that will help you to successfully grow your business in a long term. We continually update our platform with the newest technologies and techniques to make your website Google relevant and up to date. All of the Kommand website building packages are mobile ready and SEO friendly. If you have no time, but would like to have a website for a small fee we can build it for you. You will have access to your website and will be able to change text, offers or pictures. If you would like to find out more simply visit Kommand site.

Although Suarez has bitten off more than he can chew this time, it doesn't mean you can't have a bigger bite of the apple during the World Cup Brazil 2014. This year’s tournament has already seen some exciting moments and has abducted the strict attention of millions of viewers from across the globe. However, even if you are not a passionate football fan, don't underestimate the impact this event can have on your business.

World Cup Special Offers

For customers to feel like they've won a penalty every time they score a goal is going to generate plenty of interest. Buy one get one free offers are always delightful from the consumers point of view. But by using the 'World Cup' as the reason for this incentive, people never strive too far away from the characteristics of cattle and walk right in. A global event always seems to add a great deal of legitimacy for these special offers, making customers more susceptible.

Temporary website renovation

This immediately catches the imagination of your customers and lets them know you've got a heart filled with passion and potentially a sense of humour. By decorating the site in your flag's colours, you are making your customers feel that they belong to something. You could even be more subtle with your digital decorating and apply the changes to only buttons or links.

Get involved into the World Cup!

If you and your business are connected to social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, don't pass this opportunity to awaken your customers. Watch the games and cheer your audience, encourage others via your status updates and invite them to comment and share their opinions.

Conditional deals

Social media sites will prove to be a massive help in this case, so if you don't already have an account, set one up! Offering great deals based on half time or full time scores is a great way to keep people following your updates. 

Don't have a website?

No problem! Just pick a template and build one with Kommand. Mobile ready websites from only £9 a month. Start promoting your business today!

Brand

Unless the customer can connect with the brand in some way or the other, he/she wouldn't be able to gravitate towards it and hence the desire to purchase would not arise! What's in a name? This popular saying is definitely not applicable for brand names because in today's highly competitive world, the brand name is everything. This is the reason why companies engage tirelessly in brand building exercises because the brand name is often stronger than logical assertion when it comes to motivating a customer to buy! If a brand name has a good reputation of churning out high quality and useful products then customers would flock to the same considering the good reputation the brand enjoys!

Ease of Purchase

Today, we live in the era that believes 'Customer is King'. Due to the cut-throat competition present in the market, all the companies are vying for the attention and loyalty of the consumers. In an attempt to outdo one another, these companies are presenting things on a platter to their prospective and actual customers in order to make the whole process of buying very easy. With options like online shopping or shopping from website, customers get to enjoy fabulous features like speedy delivery of products, secure payment gateway, enjoyable and quick buying process and so on. These are the main motivating factors that caused them to switch from conventional purchases in physical stores to shopping online in top notch websites.

Thus, if you wish to ensure that your business is doing well and that the sales figure are rising, you need to pay attention to the factors that motivate the consumers to make the purchase. If you are able to get the formula right then success would soon follow!

Making a website may be easy for everyone, but there are times when you may not have time needed to get your website up and running. With no technical skills required to build a website, gone are the days when you had to make huge investments to get a website live. Kommand professional web building platform can build a website that is an ideally suited for your need. Did you know that Kommand can build a website account for you? Once the website is built you can continue updating and modifying it 24/7.

Where to Start?

Get in touch and speak to a member of Kommand team about your requirements. The expert will then call you or book you in for a consultation with one of the designer experts. During consultation, tell your designers exactly how you want your website to look. Ensure you mention everything from homepage and contact form to the font, give all the details. Next, a team of professional will build a website based on your requirements. You will be shown your website as it progress, so that you can suggest any change if you want to. In less than a week, your fully functioning website will be up and running. You can as well update and change your website, but you can always call if you need some help.

Why Work with Kommand?

Kommand website building platform is cost effective and easy to use and maintain. You will only need £15 a month to build a website with your own domain and £25 a month to have a fully responsive website with Kommand. Click here and find out about all of our pricing packages. Kommand provides professional designs to match any business needs. Your website will be social media integrated, Google friendly and mobile optimized, responsive. Most importantly, you can access Kommand building platform 24/7 regardless of your lactation in the world.

Why is it important to have a website?

A website is an online face of your business or hobby. In other words, it can be seen as your electronic business card that is always available on Google. It offers a cost effective and convenient means of keeping in touch with your existing clients as well as keeping them informed of developments within your business. It is an efficient, interactive channel of communication with customers. A website will boost your business marketing strategy, by leveraging this dynamic and versatile internet marketing channel. It will enable you to provide your prospective customers with up to date information about your business. Most importantly, the business will be open 24/7!

What are you waiting for? Be an architect of your future and start building today!

Time to re-brand your website?

So you have a website… But does it perform well? Does it provide excellent customer experience and most importantly convert visitors into buyers? If your website looks old and a bit tired maybe it is time to consider rebranding?

Re-design or re-develop?

It's always about grabbing and keeping the interest of your target market. A re-design or even a small website refresh can vastly improve your customer’s browsing experience and reveal the real benefits of your brand. A website re-development offers a perfect opportunity to introduce up-to-date content and functionality that leads to higher ranking on search engines such as Google and higher ROI. However, if you are a small business owner it can be quite tricky to stay ahead of the competition, especially if your competitor’s marketing spend is a lot higher than yours. So how to compete against the bigger players on the market?

What are the key benefits of Kommand?

Kommand is an easy and affordable website building tool which can make your business site live in minutes. It allows you creating professional, functional, feature rich and mobile friendly websites without any programming knowledge. All you need is a well written content, a few good images and a computer.

From only £15 a month you will have a full control of your own website which means you will be able to add and edit content without paying extra to a web design agency. You will be able to change various images and messages on your website 24 hours a day whenever is convenient to you. In addition, you will be able to post blogs and integrate your website with social media platforms. Did we mention that there is no contract? So what happens if you want to stop using Kommand? It’s simple! All you need to do is take your content, web domain and cancel direct debit. Try out Kommand today! Find the best package for your business and create your website in minutes!

Would you like to improve your website’s rankings on search engines?

Did you know that Kommand is continuously renewed and updated with the most recent security and search engine optimization features? Kommand can help you to improve your website’s position on Google and all of the major search engines online.

No time to redevelop a website?

No problem! For a small fee our team can build a website for you! Click here and see what do we offer.

See some of the templates today and build your own professional looking website.

A well maintained and engaging website is inarguably the best way to connect with your specific  target audience. It's easier than ever before to create a professional looking site, quickly and  without any expensive web development tools. However, knowing where to start can be difficult.  So here's a few ideas to help you create a memorable and interesting site.

Create a Clear Message

It is enormously important that you quickly and clearly define the message of your site. By having an eye catching homepage that not only articulates your purpose but helps create a brand identity you are better able to grab your audience and hold their interest. The viewer should be left in no doubt as to what you do and why you do it.

An interesting interface

Quality web development relies on the ability to create an easy to navigate and interesting interface that offers an enjoyable user experience. Create a logical flow through your site by imagining how the website would be navigated and enjoyed by potential users. Be sure to organise the information on your site into specific sub headings and create content that is both digestible and informative. Remember, a clipped, punchy and energetic design style is far more effective in holding the attention of a visitor than a dull and uninspired visual approach.

Engaging content

The most important aspect of your site will be how you communicate your message to your audience. Without interesting content visitors won’t return and it will be difficult to attract a steady flow of users to the site. To do this think about your use of tone and language. Try to create content that is not only informative and relevant but most importantly appeals specifically to your target demographic. Perhaps the most vital element of website creation is understanding who will use your site and then tailoring the content to best attract that kind of person.

Kommand is a perfect website building platform that doesn't require any technical knowledge. All you need to do is define the purpose of your website, develop engaging content, add some pictures and start building your own beautiful website.