When we asked our Facebook fans what was the most important element to a successful business website, it was no surprise that social media sharing was vital to our customers businesses. What good is having great and engaging content if people have no way to share it?

Very simply, that is the question all businesses need to ask. One of the most effective ways of getting traffic to your website is by using social sharing buttons. These sharing buttons should be seen as free advertising and brands that are not taking advantage of them are in danger of missing out.

So what is social sharing?

Social sharing enables users to connect with something that you have done on your website with their friends on a variety of social networks. As your content begins to be distributed across the web, your referral traffic will increase. Furthermore, your website rankings will increase in search engine results.

The most important part of social media is to actually be social! We are a world that loves to share; with latest research suggesting that 27 million pieces of content are shared each day. Furthermore, further research shows that 23% of social media messages include links to branded content. This presents a massive opportunity, one that shouldn’t be ignored.

Share your way to the top

For anybody that is interested in content marketing, making sure that you work your way to the top of search engines has at the top of your priority list has to be the understanding of content. As we discussed last time, your content is what distinguishes you from the rest of the online noise. In an ever increasingly competitive world, standing out is crucial.

Social sharing is a great tactic if you want to drive traffic to your website. In just one click, users can easily share your products and services, putting these potential new customers just a click away from your products and services pages, exposing your brand to a new audience.

But remember, people will not share content that they do not like. Invest your time and effort into creating engaging, informative and relevant content for your audience. Then allow your customers and fans to share!

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In February, we asked our customers on our Facebook fan page what they thought to be the most important elements that are critical to a business website in 2013. Whilst the results were broad, it was clear from those we asked, that engaging content, social sharing links and easy to find contact information were vital to the success of any website.

We take a look at these elements in more detail to show how they can contribute in making the most effective website for your business.

Content is Still King

Content in all of its forms is incredibly important for any website, but especially for a small business. The website is the most important part of your business, because generally it is the first point of contact that a prospective customer will have with you. It may be an old cliché, but first impressions are vital.

If you are selling products, having clear information on these offerings is vital. If you are providing a service, having a blog or a testimonial page may be more relevant. These elements should range from standard text pages, to image libraries as well as incorporating the growing trend of video. Regardless of the purpose of your website, you need to provide content that is relevant and important to your audience.

This content must also be unique. Why would somebody come to your website if they can get the information elsewhere? Driving people to your website is all well and good, but if they are falling off the other end then what is the point? Remember, content is essential to customer acquisition and retention.

There can be no hiding from the fact that producing content is one the biggest challenges for small businesses. According to a 2011 HiveFire Annual Content Curration Adoption Survey, creating original content and having the time do it was by far the most challenging aspect.

However, this should not deter you. Putting serious effort into your content will be rewarded by search engines. For example, search engine algorithms factor a website size in their rankings, thus, if you have more pages it is more likely that search engines will value you higher. Added to this, make sure that your content is specific to a targeted keyword or phrase. This will create relevancy for a search engine and in time, should deliver higher traffic to your website.

What shouldn’t be underestimated is being aware of what your content is saying about you and your business. If content is sloppy, that is how your business will be perceived. You have to create entertaining, engaging and interesting content. A good tip is to look at the content from the perspective of your audience, as if you had just landed on your website. Would you be enticed by your offering? If not, write from the customers’ perspective and change your focus.

So what do the stats say?

• Total spending on branded content per company in 2012 rose by 5% and is gaining a larger share of corporate budgets
• B2B marketers are spending 33% of their marketing budgets on content marketing, which is up from 26% in 2011
• 83% of B2B content marketers use articles on their website
• 74% of B2B marketers use content marketing to achieve customer acquisition goals

Content in all of its forms is still the most important element to a business website. Remember to keep your audience interested in your offering by continually offering unique content that will keep them interested in what you are doing and most importantly, returning to your website.

Next time we look at how important social sharing has become to small businesses and the importance of allowing customers to share as much as your content as possible.

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If this sounds ambitious then I promise it can be done courtesy of the wonderful Pareto Law (or the “80:20 Rule”).

The Pareto Law states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort and you can find its effects in many areas of life.  For example:

• You wear 20% of your wardrobe 80% of the time
• 80% of computer crashes are caused by 20% of bugs
• You occupy 20% of your house 80% of the time
• 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers

Interestingly this also works for websites: 80% of your visitors will only see 20% of your website and 20% of your visitors will account for 80% of your website’s sales!  So what does knowing this mean for you?

It means that in order to make your website 5 times more effective you need to find the 20% of pages that most of your visitors see and do everything you can to improve them.  (You can identify these pages by using special online software such as, Google’s free tool, Google Analytics.)  The key thing to remember is that every improvement you make will show itself five times more than any other page simply because more people will be seeing it.

So, what can you do to improve these critical pages?  First, if they are not your sales pages then you must make sure they direct your visitor towards the pages that do sell your products or services.  If they are sales pages then consider; writing a better headline, making your contact details more visible, emphasising the benefits of your business, deepening the amount of information you present, adding a video and so on.

Every improvement you make could represent a five-fold increase in your website’s performance.

And finally, there’s also a spin off benefit for you and that is you will only need to spend time improving the top 20% of pages on your website and not every page.  The result of which is your time will be five times more productive.  Gosh, one of life’s win:wins!

Jed Wylie is the author of Make Your Website Sell and works for Morgan Wylie a web design and digital marketing agency in the Midlands.

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A few years back, most templates for WordPress looked like traditional blog, with basic functionality and nothing more. However, web designers have been getting more creative when it comes to free WordPress website templates. That’s because user requirements and expectations for WordPress blog templates are now very high.

People expect all templates and themes, free or commercial, to include built-in admin options that allow them to easily set up their site and also customise it with little effort. So, whether you need a theme for a basic blog, a portfolio or a magazine-style website, you’ll have no trouble finding a professional free WordPress template that you can set up in 10 minutes.

We know high quality templates are hard to find so in this article we’ve put together a list with the top six best places to get free WordPress website templates. All these themes can be downloaded, customised and use for both personal and commercial projects.

Free templates for WordPress

#1 The WordPress themes directory

The best place to begin your search for the perfect template is the free WordPress themes directory. It currently includes more than 1,600 themes that you can download for free and use for your personal projects or client websites. You can search by colour, number of columns, subject and more.

#2 WordPress Themes

At WordPress Themes there are more than 3,000 themes you can choose from and new ones are added every day. Simply choose a category from the right side of the page and browse around until you find the perfect WordPress blog template.

#3 Free Theme Layouts

FreeThemeLayouts.com has a smaller collection of free WordPress website templates, but they’re professionally designed. The downside about this site is there’s no advanced search function so you’ll just have to browse around to find the right theme.

#4 Theme Lab

Theme Lab is also a good place worth checking out. Although it has a rather small gallery of free WordPress website templates, you can find some high quality ones for your next project. Browse around and click on the “Live Demo” to see a preview of the template.

#5 Top WP Themes

This site has about 300 free WordPress themes you can download and use in your projects. Simply choose the number of columns for the theme you’re looking for.

#6 Blog Oh! Blog

This site has fewer free themes but they’re unique designs you probably won’t find elsewhere so do check it out.

Any other good places to download free WordPress website templates? Do share them in a comment below.

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I remember when I first started with my own website.  I hardly knew any code so how was I supposed to build a website from scratch? Sure, I had some friends that were doing web design and programming, but I couldn’t ask them to do it for free because I knew this takes time and they had their own jobs and paid projects.

I was seeing all these beautifully designed websites everywhere on the Internet and of course I was wondering: do all these people know web design and code? If not, then they must have paid a fortune to build it. Not long after I tried an online website builder for the first time, just for the fun of it, and I loved how easy it was to use.

Why it’s better than a desktop app?

Unlike desktop based apps, with the website builder from 123-reg there is no software to download, no programs to install, just a simple application that can help you build your website online from scratch, exactly the way you’ve imagined it.

The best thing about working with online tools is that you can build your site and edit it anytime and no matter where you are. Everything is online so you don’t need to use the same computer as you would with a desktop tool that requires you to install the software and only use it from the PC where you installed it.

There’s no such thing as the perfect template. Wrong!

While you can get a free template online to use it for your new site, chances are you’ll never be able to find the perfect one that needs no alteration, which means you have to have some programming skills. There’s always something you want to change: a text box, a font, the header or the footer, the background image, etc.

Also, the most common complaint about free templates is that they feel “template-ish”.  Who knows how many other sites are already using it? You probably want a template that’s unique and that no other site is using, right?

When you use the online website builder from 123-reg, you can create your website starting with a classy or professional pre-made template (we have over 100 templates to choose from!) and then decide what you’d like to add to it and where.

Maybe you want three text boxes at the middle, each with an image above to make it more attractive.  All you need to do is drag’n’drop those text and image boxes onto your template. You can resize them to any size you’d like and add the content right then and there. Then just hit “Publish”.

Customising your website’s design

You can always go back and rearrange the elements or change whatever doesn’t look right – images, fonts, text – and your site will be updated instantly.  It’s just a matter of dragging and dropping elements on the page and that takes seconds.

With the website builder from 123-reg you also have the options to add all types of forms to allow your customers to contact you or leave a feedback.

Most of us never thought we would be able to build our own websites without the help of a web designer or a programmer but with the online website builder from 123-reg, web building is so easy that anyone can do it.  Go to our site, sign up for an account and try our website builder for free for 14 days.

What was your first website building experience like? Did you need any help?

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If you’re looking to jazz up your site and want to know where to find free fonts or how to create free fonts yourself, then read on. If not, read on anyway, a font can do many things for your site.

Although there are many websites that offer free fonts, we know how hard it is to find good places with free quality ones that are licensed for commercial work. From experience, most of those sites include either the same boring freeware or have so many ads and popups and are so spammy that you feel like you have to wash your hands after just looking at them.

So, if you don’t know where to find free fonts, we’ve done the hard work for you and put together a list with some fantastic resources where you can get truly unique and quality freeware. Also, if you’re feeling inspired and want to create your custom ones, then read on and we’ll show you how.

So, where can I get free fonts?

One of our favourite sites to stock up on free fonts is DaFont.com.

Not only does this site offer more than 17,000 fonts for free sorted by style but it’s also very easy to use. These are all freeware, shareware or public domain and you can also test them out before downloading and using them in your projects.  This may not be the biggest freeware site on the web, but it definitely has quality ones so give it a chance.

FontSquirrel.com is another great site with quality free fonts for download (and a very cool name!).

They offer well-designed and unique freeware fonts and these are all licensed for commercial use. This newbie site is not very large but it’s worth keeping an eye on it.

FontSpace.com also offers a decent collection of more than 18,000 free fonts shared by designers around the world.

*Remember to check the copyright conditions on these fonts as some fonts are ‘Free for personal use’ or require you to purchase the Full version in order to use it for commercial purposes. Also, make sure you review the terms and conditions included and keep the original archived in case you will ever need to prove permission of use.

Can I get fonts to work online?

Sure, Google has its webfonts site which allows you to use styled fonts online. You can download fonts for free in return for a ‘contribution’ of anything from $0 to $100, depending on how generous you’re feeling.

How do I create my own font?

If you can’t find the free font you want or simply want to use one that is unique, you can just create your very own custom font.

Here are the steps to creating your own font:

1) Write or sketch down the entire alphabet (upper case and lower case) and also characters such as underscore, hash, commas, brackets etc.

2) Scan or take a picture of your future font.

3) Open it in Photoshop or any other photo editing tool and adjust the threshold so that you have pure black on pure white. (Blue on white or other contrasting colour should work fine too.) Once done, save the new image but don’t overwrite your original.

4) Import the new image into Illustrator. Select the image and then go to Object > Image Trace > Make. You will then be left with a vector version of your font.

5) You will need to expand the font so that you can select each character separately from each other. Go to Object > Expand… and then make sure that Fill and Stroke is ticked.

TIP: Use the direct selection tool to make sure there are no overlapping paths that could ruin your font.

6) Copy and Paste the vector character into your Font creation program.

7) Save your font and name it appropriately.

8) Install your font on your computer and start using for your own projects.

How to convert this new font into a web-ready font

If you have designed your own font then you can use FontSquirrels @font-face generator to get a downloadable pack which includes all the web-safe font files for you to be able to use your font online.

Now that you know where to find free fonts and how to create your custom ones, it’s your turn to share. What other free fonts resources are you using?

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When I’m a fan of a website, whether it’s an online clothing shop, a travel agency or a restaurant, I usually become a fan on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. I think that’s what we all do so we can engage with them and to ensure we don’t miss any of their offers.

Everything is moving toward social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and many others so it’s only normal to add them to your site to let your visitors and customers know where they can find you online. When you’re building your site, whether it’s a personal site, an e-shop or a presentation site, integrating widgets into your site is very important.

Let’s look at a few reasons why you need to add 3^rd party widgets to your site and how easy you can do that.

Help your customers find you

Whether you’re a lawyer or you own a shop or run a coffee shop, people need to know where they can find you. Adding a Google Maps widget on your site is the easiest way to give them directions, rather than writing your address in plain text.  People are looking for directions from a specific location and with Google Maps they can see exactly what route to take to get to you.

For instance, last week I was looking up directions to a hotel in Berlin that I booked for this month. As I’ve never been to Berlin before, I was having trouble finding their address based on the limited directions offered on their site. No step-by-step instructions from the airport, just an address.

When you add a Google widget on your site, it makes it easier for your customers to find you as they can see exactly how they can get to your location. When you’re building your site with the easy website builder from 123-reg, you simply need to drag’n’drop the Google Maps widget on to your template and add a line of code from Google Maps to show you location.

Engage openly and ask for feedback

Most every company in the world is using Facebook, Twitter and many more social networks to interact with their customers and to also attract new customers. You can also use these networks to ask for feedback from your customers and encourage them to share their opinions on the products or services that you’re selling. It’s the easiest way to communicate with your clients and find out first-hand what they think about your products and what you can do to improve them.

Your customers’ testimonials are seen as recommendations and that’s why so many companies or brands have included social networks into their marketing strategies.

With our easy website builder, you can add these widgets to your site by simply draggin’n’dropping them from the Social tab on the left menu onto your template.

Find out where your customers are spending their time online and add widgets for those social networks on your site so they know where to find you online.

Show how your product works

YouTube is such an amazing tool to grow your business. There are so many things you can do with it to connect with customers, promote your products, share your knowledge and show off your expertise.

You can upload videos, testimonials from your customers to add to your credibility, promote events, share a tour of your office and many more. So, why not also add a YouTube widget on your site?

If you’re a fan of Flickr, you can also add a Flickr widget to your site so your visitors can see your photos directly on your site, without having to visit your Flickr account. Add pictures of your office, your team or show how your product works.

You can do all this and more with our easy website builder. Not only can you build a new website from scratch with little to no programming skills, but you can also create a more engaging experience for your visitors. We’re offering a 14-days free trials so you can see for yourself how easy it is to build a great website that you visitors will come to love.

What other widgets are you using on your site?

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Web 1.0 connected parts of the world and communities in ways that few had every imagined but it was flat and one-dimensional. Where once a letter may have taken weeks to be delivered, an email could be sent almost instantaneously but it was still only really old technology being pushed in a new format. Web 2.0 brought us interactivity: Rich media, social & bridging of the gaps in the global economy, making us all closer and in part more reliant on one another. Next up is Web 3.0 but what of it?

With debate still raging about Web 2.0 and what it is, Web 3.0 is even less agreed in terms of a definition, and possibly never will be. What is certain however, is it will be nearer Sci-Fi than anything we have ever seen before. If you are pertubed by Google’s suggested search phrases now, dislike social search and are anti-CCTV, the next generation for web technologies may have you squirming in your seat as the colour drains from your face.

The Semantic Web

Tim Berners-Lee the founder father of the WWW and has described the Semantic Web as part of Web 3.0

The key will be internet tools that make search faster, more intuitive and become an even more important part of your life. For those yet to be controlled by their smartphone mood apps, electronic calendar and online task reminders, the world of the web is set to become very different as Web 3.0 becomes our personal assistant, analysing the patterns of our daily lives and throwing up new suggestions for us to follow. Imagine the ship’s computer in the BBC comedy Red Dwarf and Web 3.0 might not be too far away, if a little less sarcastic.

3D-Printing

The semantic Web is only part of the package that Web 3.0 is likely to offer. As this video https://vimeo.com/36027546 of the world’s first 3D-printer pavilion now open in Amsterdam shows, technology now exists to effectively print in 3D form. Creating physical objects down electrical wires is as close as science has so far got to the sci-fi favourite of tele-porting and possibly that itself may be what Web 4.0 brings. For now Web 3.0 is likely to be very focused upon creation of 3D form. It could revolutionise the way we consume, almost banish shipping costs in an instant and have a massive impact on how we interact with the world around us. Imagine turning up at an exhibition with just a printer under your arm and then ‘printing’ a full exhibition stand, with banners, tables, chairs and display stands. The technology already exists so within a few years the chances are it is the kind of technology that certainly those with a techie-bent will be taking for granted.

Augmented Reality

If Web 3.0 is about all things Sci-Fi, then augmented reality is possibly the closest thing to tele-porting humans will get in Web 3.0. Placing you in any environment, overlapping real with virtual worlds, augmented reality is already in use by some in the form of Blippar and Aurasma.

GeoSocial

Whether you use it or not Geo-social in the form of FourSquare gaming or just check-ins on Facebook Places has had an impact on our culture in recent years.  What has been learned by the geeks however, is far more ground-breaking. If the other sci-fi aspects of Web 3.0 concerns you, this functionality could be very disturbing. Imagine your friends knowing exactly where you were at any point, so that you could move your virtual engagement into the real world. It exists in the mainstream already as Apple’s Find Friends and it is just that technology that could soon see you ‘stalked’ by every brand you have ever liked on Facebook or engaged with on Twitter. Spot marketing at it’s most accurate but where the law will be drawn on privacy is yet to be seen. You needn’t have been so overt in your actions either. Modern forensic language analysis by computers can identify brands or places you might like just by the words you use on a day to day basis. You could be reaching out to perfect customers before they even know you exist.

In summary Web 3.0 will be more about personalisation and dynamic content created on the basis of intelligent analysis and search of our individual actions… Sound familiar? Yes, in reality we are already embracing many of the Web 3.0 facets, beginning to understand them and accept them as part of our normal every day lives. Certainly that is the case in terms of the Semantic Web. In relation to 3D printing, the technology is being refined every day, but imagine being able to reward a loyal customer immediately with a physical item as a thank you. Literally printing down the line to their office. That brings reaching out to customers to a new level and it is that element of Web 3.0 which we think will literally bring about the biggest change in engagement.

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How can you build an online business from scratch without spending loads?

In the past you may have needed a whole team of people to help you design and code your site, but now there are easier and cheaper solutions that can help you build your site from scratch even if you don’t know any code.  These days, it’s so easy to start an online business even with a small budget.

With an all-in-one website builder not only do you get to create your new site by yourself, with no outside help needed, but you can create it exactly as you’ve imagined it.

Getting started with the all-in-one website builder

When you get the website builder from 123-reg it comes with everything you need to get your site online. You can register a free domain name for your site and also get plenty of web space to host your personal or business site online. Our packages are designed to ensure you have enough space for your site, whether you’re building an online portfolio or an e-shop. Now that you have your domain and hosting in order, you can start building your site.

Customising your website

With a website builder you get to design your site the way you want with no extra help and for a lot less.

Think about it. Hiring web designers and web programmers is expensive, not to mention time-consuming.  You need to review examples of templates, choose one and then if there’s something you want to change, it may take days or even weeks until they’re completed. If you’re a perfectionist and have already an image in mind of how you want your site to look like then why not create it yourself?

Choosing a template

Our website builder allows you customise your site easily. Choose a template from our wide collection of pre-made templates and then customise it as you see fit so your site is unique and doesn’t resemble any other site on the Internet.

Drag’n’drop elements

You can change anything from background images to header, footer, colour schemes and text fonts.

From the menu on the left, you can choose to add everything from text and images, site search, navigation menus, slideshows, videos and more. Simply drag and drop them onto your template and then move them around to where you think they would fit best. The great thing about it is that you don’t need any technical knowledge to build and design your site from scratch.

You can even add a carousel gallery at the top of your homepage to showcase your products and special offers. To do that, simply go to Widgets on the right menu and drag and drop the Carousel onto your page anywhere you want.

Using a carousel can help make your site look more dynamic and interactive. Check out this simple example of how you can implement the carousel into your new site.

You can add as many as 5 pages with our Personal package and it’s more than enough if you need to create an online portfolio or a presentation site. However, if you want to build an ecommerce site, the Business package allows you to add an unlimited number of pages so that you can create various pages to present your products.

You will also be able to add ‘Google Add to Cart’ or ‘PayPal Buy Now’ buttons on each page to allow your visitors to buy products directly from your site. Take a look at our customers’ sites to see how they’ve used our website builder to create their site from scratch.

Another great thing about using our all-in-one website builder is that you can add widgets to your site to enrich your visitors’ experience on your site. You can easily integrate Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or Google Maps to let your customers know where they can find you online and offline.

Getting visitors to your new site

Optimising your site is very important as it will help Google and other search engines show your site in search results and people will find your site faster.  Our website builder allows you to optimise your site for search engines easily.

Click on the Manage tab (1) to set the title and description (2) for your site that will appear in search results. Click Save settings (3) when you are finished.  You can do this for every page of your site.

URLs are also a very important part of the optimisation process.  With our website builder you can control how your URLs look. When you create a new page you’ll be given the options to give a title and page URL for your webpage so include the appropriate ones to help you with your SEO. Find out more about the value of URLs.

If you go to Manage and click on My Site you will see that you can also add the Google Analytics code for your site so you can track your site’s performance directly from your Website Builder account in 123-reg.

This makes it so much easier for you as you won’t have to access the source code and add the Google Analytics code to every page on your site.

As you can see, the all-in-one website builder from 123-reg provides you with everything you need to build your website from scratch easily and without spending loads. So, why not give it a try? Sign up now and try it out free for 14 days.

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Every business on the Internet wants to achieve four goals: increase sales, get more revenue, increase customer loyalty and get new customers. There are many ways to achieve these goals like offering discounts, creating contests and promoting products and services on every relevant channel.

Even if these techniques are good and work most of the time, there is one thing that most people ignore but that can help get more revenue: building a site that visitors trust.  When a visitor believes a site it trustworthy, chances are he or she will complete the sale and not abandon their cart because they don’t feel your site is secure enough.

To gain the trust of your visitors and get them to convert, you must first build a trustworthy site. A trustworthy site refers to reputation and security.

Reputation

A company’s reputation reassures visitors that your business is not only a popular business, but also a reputable and reliable business. If you are a reputable brand like Amazon, people expect to get their orders on time and be provided with excellent customer service when needed.

However, to determine what your selling point is and what impresses your visitors, you need to get to know them first. We’re all different and we’re affected by different elements.

For example, some may be impressed by a company’s number of customers, years of experience or awards. Others can be impressed by a huge number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers or flattering testimonials from former or current customers.  So, get to know your customers and show them what they need to see to feel more confident when buying from your site.

On a different note, one thing is for sure: if your content has grammar or spelling errors, few visitors will dare to buy from your site. So, pay closer attention to the finer points of the content on your site.

If you’re just starting out, it may be a bit more difficult to get visitors to trust you but not impossible! Find your selling points and promote them heavily. Offer free trials and ask for feedback to get others to see how great your product or customer service is.

Security

Your visitors need a guarantee that your site is safe and secure. You may be taking all the precautions, using website protection solutions like the 123-reg Site Scanner to keep your site secure, but you visitors don’t know that unless you show it to them.

Now, more than ever, people are scared to share their sensitive information online because of the recent hacks and breaches on important sites that were believed to be 100% secure. So, one thing you can do to show visitors that your site is trustworthy is to use a security seal. The security seal appears in your visitor’s browser letting him know your site is secure.

We have just launched Site Scanner, a website protection solution that helps keep your site secure against hackers. This also includes a Site Seal that you can use on your site to show visitors that your site is protected by an advanced security solution from 123-reg. Find out more about the 123-reg Site Seal and our recently launched Site Scanner solution.

What other things are you doing to build a trustworthy site?

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