A good website helps, helps then sells. People want to trust your business. By giving them information, by making it easy to navigate and by explaining your points of difference from your competitors, you will get the business.

What are your most profitable lines. Create specific webpages about these products or services. Include genuine testimonials from real customers who love your work.

If you have good SEO (search engine optimization) working on every webpage, many visitors will come in on any number of your pages, however, your homepage is important too.

Is the message on your homepage selling your points of difference, why you are the best? The message might change over time which is why having a dynamic website with a content management system is important. It allows you to change your message (and other content) as you wish.

A website is like a shark – it needs to be constantly on the move to stay alive. Keep your message relevant and remember, help, help, sell wins the day!

And make sure you have excellent SEO working for you. If you can’t be found, you won’t get the business. It’s that simple.

2. How easy is it for web visitors to navigate your website?

Three clicks and you’re there. That’s the max. Does your website pass the test?

If you have lots of products in different categories (and many businesses do), list product or service types in these category names that mean something to your clients. List the products under these categories, again in product names that make sense to the web visitor – your potential clients. Whether you are a one product business or have 100s, make sure your website tells your visitors what they are looking for.

3. You need a call to action

What is it you want your customers or potential customers to do? Do you want them to ring you for a quote? Do you want them to ‘buy now’ if you have an ecommerce website?

A clear call to action can work by directing your potential clients to act. Every page needs a call to action. Does your website have this? If it doesn’t, it needs a revamp.

4. Can web visitors easily contact you?

In the iPhone era with unlimited call packages for mobile phones, people want to call and speak to someone – preferably a real person.

How easy is it for you to find your telephone number on your own website? Do the test from a potential customer’s point of view. Imagine you are a potential customer, you like what you see and you want to contact the business right now.

So where is your telephone number on your website? The key position is the top right banner for every webpage. This is the perfect position but don’t let that stop you putting it everywhere else too. In the footer, on pages where people will read about or see what they want. Make it easy for people to call you straight away.

Include a Contact Us link. Having a ‘contact us’ link to a contact form is also good as some people (like me) want to leave a message and let the company get back to me. But it is proven that talking with a potential customer can make all the difference between you getting the work or your competition.

But wait, there’s more …

Special offers such as ‘buy one get one free’, ‘bonus package with every sale’ – they work. Make sure your special offers are accessible. Using the middle of the top banner (so it appears on every page) is a great position. Offering a ‘free quote’ or some other special offer can get you that important lead.

Every webpage should work to sell your service or product. Linking pages within your website is one way to help web visitors to browse and investigate why you’re better than all the others.

Internal links provide ways for your potential customers to stay on your website and find what they want. Then they will call because they can find your telephone number easily. See no. 4.

Does the web design suit your business?

A very sophisticated web design will work for a very sophisticated business. A funky Newtown hairdresser will want something completely different. A lunchtime café and takeaway needs a completely different design from a 5-star restaurant.

Getting the right design that suits your business is important. Great web design is about finding the right balance for each individual business. The design also plays a vital role in functionality. There is no point having a great looking website that no one can navigate. And if any web designer suggests using Flash, go somewhere else. It is so last century!

7. Choose Bold Type for your money-making website

Making great looking websites that work for our clients 24/7 is what we do best. Best of all, our clients can manage it. As one of our customers said:

I can’t believe this is so easy. I can add new products, take down out of date content, upload images – it’s amazing as I have no computer skills.
Read some of our testimonials from clients.

Yes, your business will make more money. We’ve had great success in building visitor numbers. One company had a 3000% increase in the first year. Yes, 3000 per cent! If you want your website to start working for you, call us now on 0410 037 635. Sue will take your call and organise a free quote. Or fill in our contact form (if you are like me and prefer to get on with business!).

Written by Sue Stevens, Principal of Bold Type

The new Cosway Australia website built by Bold Type

The latest website designed and developed for Cosway Australia is an example of how a great website looks great, reflects the essence of the business and functions well.

The web design

Bold Type have some great web designers on board who can design a great looking website that encompasses the latest web design trends and, at the same time, reflects the essence of the business.

For the Cosway Australia website, the web designer submitted four different designs for consideration. One was selected and after minor adjustments, was approved.

The web development

The Cosway Australia website was developed using WordPress, an exceptional content management system. WordPress is often associated with blogs but it’s much more than that. Here’s what the WordPress website says about itself:

WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 25 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call ‘home’ — we’d love you to join the family.

Importantly, a great website needs to have great SEO, that means that people can find your website when searching for your products or services. Search engine optimisation is the key to making your website visible on the Internet. That’s why Bold Type websites are built to maximize SEO.

The result

The team at Cosway Australia love their new website as do we. It has a professional yet welcoming feel about it.  It’s easy to find what you’re looking for, and from the clients’ point of view, it’s dead easy to modify.

That’s part of the beauty of the WordPress web software. With our experienced WordPress developer, we can create any style of website with any feature the client needs to make their website work for their business.

See more websites by Bold Type

Read more news on website design and development

Visit Cosway Australia’s website

Colour graph showing business growth

Many business owners, small business owners included, want to grow their businesses but are not sure how.

In one-man bands, where your time is money, it’s a challenge to grow a business without an exponential hike in the number of hours you work. But there are ways and means!

Here are four ideas about how to increase the revenue and profit in your business.

1 Increase your prices

Are you too cheap? If you are a service provider, your quotes may be too cheap – you spend more time than anticipated in which case you end up working for peanuts. Under-quoting on time for work completed not only means less per contract, as you only have so many hours in a day to work, your overall ability to increase your income suffers as well.

If you are in the business of selling products, an increase in the price of your goods can have a real effect on your bottom line. Many people don’t mind paying more for the right quality product.

Here’s a strategy. Do an audit on what services or products are the most profitable and which are not. Ditch the unprofitable lines and focus on the 80 percent. Increase your prices for these services or products by 10 percent.

Develop a communications strategy that tells existing clients of the changes. Work out a script on what to say and collect supporting documentation such as testimonials that show you deliver quality products on time. One company that did just this increased their bottom line by over $100 000 and lost only three clients.

2. Develop a relationship with existing clients

This is an easy way to grow your business and yet it’s often overlooked completely. Keeping in touch – without becoming a pest – can grow your business without having to find new clients. Start an email marketing campaign to keep your clients informed about your industry, your business and other relevant information.

Do a survey of your clients. Use your email marketing to find out what your clients want. Ask some simple questions to get feedback from your clients.

• What did you like about the work we did for you?
• What could we do to improve our service?
• What are your plans for the coming year?
• How can we help?

You’ll find some survey programs on the Internet clients a survey – online products such as www.surveymonkey.com.

3. Find more customers

Firstly, determine which areas of your business are the most profitable. You might need to do an audit on costs verses income to see what is making you money and what is not. Streamline your marketing to focus on profitable areas.

A business without a functional, well-designed website in the 21 century is not a business!

Modify your website so that your best selling products are more prominent. Improve your website and make sure it is search engine optimised. Websites go in and out of fashion just like everything else so if your website is looking old and tired, it may need a makeover.

Use your analytics program on your website to assess your ratio between number of visitors, number of enquiries to actual sales ratio. Make changes to your website to improve

• the number of potential customers who are looking for your service or product
• to get people to trust your company
• to choose you over competitors.

More people use the Internet to find products and services than ever before and the numbers are going to continue to grow so having an effective website is essential for growing your business.

4. Increase your profit margin

What can you do to make your business more profitable? We’ve talked about increasing your prices. Consider also how you can reduce costs.

Speak to your suppliers. Discuss costs with them and see if you can strike a better deal.

Become an environmentally friendly office. Tell clients and potential clients that you are a business that wants to protect the environment. It’s a win/win situation. You can save money by turning off equipment when not in use and recycling what you can. And, many of your clients are keen to work with businesses who care about the environment so you’ll potentially increase your number of clients.

Read more about:

Search engine optimisation

Website makeovers

See our website portfolio

Visit Bold Type’s dedicated website for all things web, Balmain Website Designs.

Publish your own book? It's a very real alternative in the digital age

With the rise and rise of the Internet as a medium for writers and authors to publish their works and to manage the entire process from writing, production, printing (if this is an option), distribution to the all-important actual sales.

In particular, writers of self-help books and non-fiction works are finding profitable marketing solutions with print-on-demand and Internet ecommerce options. However, self publishing is not new. Did you know that Mark Twain attracted a publisher by self publishing his first book?

Self publish on the Internet

Who would have thought that the Internet would turn the publishing world on its head. Sure, traditional publishing houses are producing some great books, but there is now the option for writers and authors to promote and distribute their books on the Internet. There are two ways to do this: your own website or selling through an online bookstore (or two or three).

Marketing your book on your own website

Think about having your own website to promote and sell your books online. An ecommerce plug in makes it easy for people to purchase your books and all you have to do is send the printed book. In some cases, you can even sell the PDF avoiding printing costs all together.

Selling your book on an web-based bookstore

Amazon is the most well-known online bookstore and has literally hundreds of thousands of titles, however, there are many other web-based bookstores for more localized or niche markets.

If your book has a particular niche, you might also market it through websites catering for that niche.

Print on demand

Before you put your book out there, make sure you call in the professionals

Most traditional publishers produce books in print runs of various sizes. In Australia, you might be surprised to know that an initial print run of 5000 is considered massive. Steig Larrson and sales in the millions is a very rare bird in the world so Australian print runs are often minimal. BTW, if a book sells 5000, it is considered a best seller in the Australian book market.

With digital printing that uses laser printing rather than offset printing methods, smaller print runs are now viable. Now writers and authors can ‘print on demand’ as books are ordered. This helps to test the market and decide whether a bigger offset printed version is marketable. And because the quality of digital printing is so good, it is almost impossible for the average reader to distinguish between offset and digital printing.

What you need to publishing a book

Before you put your book out there for sale, there are certain publishing requirements that you will need to adhere to, for example, you will need an ISBN and you’ll need to comply with copyright legislation. Furthermore, a book that has not been through the production cycle of structural and copy editing, desktop publishing that gives it a professional look and feel and proofreading is going to look like and be an inferior product.

Quality is important when producing, distributing and selling your book

The reason why traditional publishing houses produce excellent books is that the book has gone through a metamorphose from submission by the author to the final product on the shelf of every good bookstore. Self publishers need to get this process right if they are to compete with the big end of the publishing world.

Self publishing is a viable option in the digital world of the Internet. It can provide a great return on investment especially if you go the distance and make sure you get professional editors, proofreaders and graphic designers working with you to create a great product. It is also essential to get advice from professionals about book production, marketing and distribution. And make sure your website has great search engine optimization (SEO) so that your target market can find you and your book. A website that works for you 24/7 and brings in book sales is essential.

Self publishing: it’s not for everyone but it’s becoming a popular option if you have a great product to sell.

Read some publishing tips

See some websites designed and developed by Bold Type

Go to Bold Type’s dedicated web development website, Balmain Website Designs.

Proofreading is about correcting all those annoying typos and formatting errors

It is the proofreader’s job to check the typeset copy using standard proofreader marks to identify any typographical and formatting errors.

Consistency of writing is vital

As with editors, proofreaders in Australia use the Style manual for writers, authors, editors and printers 6th edition (2002) and any inhouse style manual for the publishing house or company. The marked up version is then returned to the typesetter for correction. An important step in the process is to return the revisions to the proofreader to ensure the typesetter has made all the corrections. It is not uncommon for errors to occur during the typesetting correction loop.

A professionally-trained proofreader is hard to find

Proofreading is a learned skill. Many baby boomer proofreaders acquired their training working for newspapers and in publishing houses in the 1960s and 1970s. However, newspapers long ago did away with this work reducing the numbers of professional proofreaders dramatically.

Proofreading is more difficult than it appears. As readers, we tend to compensate for errors and therefore we tend to skim over typographical errors. Learning to be a good proofreader requires time and a good mentor (if you can find one).

Proofreading is a different part of the publishing process from editing: structural editing and copy editing – both are far more detailed than proofreading and happen at earlier stages in the process.

What proofreaders do

Proofreading is about reviewing any text, either hard copy on paper or electronic copy on a computer, and checking for typos and formatting errors. Proofreaders can either check the text against an original document or  work ‘blind’ in that they simply check the final copy itself. Many good, professional proofreaders often identify copy-editing issues that have been missed such as grammar and inconsistency in the document.

Bold Type has a professionally trained proofreader who is renowned for his high quality work. Contact Sue Stevens at Bold Type today about proofreading your next writing project.

Read more about the publishing editorial process

Copy editing

Substantive or structural editing

Our new website that focuses on Bold Type's web publishing business

Bold Type has set up a ’sister’ website that focuses on the web publishing aspect of our business.

Because we hail from Balmain in Sydney, it made sense to call this subsidiary website, Balmain Website Designs, although we do both design and development. We also help ‘design’ a complete web presence using directories, search engines, social media and email marketing systems.

Why businesses need a strong Internet presence

The Internet is a significant component of a business’s standing in the marketplace. To quote a successful business person, ‘a business that doesn’t have a website today is equivalent to going to a business meeting without a suit – you just don’t count’. And while some of the Google and Apple executives might disagree with the suit analogy, not having a website these days certainly stops a business from growing. Studies show that 90% of people who have access to the Internet use it to search for services and products they are looking for.

Making sure people can find your website

Importantly your website needs to be ‘findable’ and when found create a great first impression. It’s not good enough to ‘have a website’, it needs to have a contemporary look and work effectively with good SEO (search engine optimisation) that allows web browsers to find your business.

Balmain Website Designs – and Bold Type – can make sure your website is using the latest technology and the latest in web design to keep your website vibrant and successful. You can contact us via both Bold Type and Balmain Website Designs for a free appraisal of your Internet and website requirements.

Have a look at our new website, Balmain Website Designs.

News article about moving house written by Bold Type for Liza McKilliam's real estate website

When writing for the web – indeed, for any particular website – it’s important to consider what will interest the visitors to that website. For those interested in buying and selling homes, moving house is inevitable. That’s why a recent article written by Bold Type for Liza McKilliam’s real estate website is all about moving house.

It’s apparently true that 43 per cent of households in Australia have moved at least once in the last five years and 49 per cent had moved more than three times so, for many Australians, finding out how to take the stress out of moving is of interest.

Writing content for the web for different businesses is one of the services we offer at Bold Type. We can also manage your Email Marketing System, writing and sending regular emails to clients.

Contact Bold Type to discuss how we can help you.

Visit Liza McKilliam’s real estate website – a website designed and developed by Bold Type.

The Macquarie Dictionary is the standard used for spelling in Australia

As an editor writing for print and the web, I have been asked many times about how to write Internet – with a cap ‘I’ or a lower case ‘i’.

In Australia, the source of all wisdom on such matters is the Macquarie Dictionary which advocates Internet with a cap ‘I’. They don’t give a reason why so here’s my reasoning why this is the correct way of writing the word.

Capitals are used for the names of things or people. Sydney is capitalized because it is the name of a city. I suggest that, while the Internet is not a geographic location, it is the name of a place of sorts and for this reason, cap ‘I’ should be used.

Another way of testing if something should be capitalized or not is to see what happens in the plural form. Sydney is the place so the concept of Sydneys does not work (even though there is another Sydney in Canada). Likewise, we don’t talk about internets as there is only one, the Internet.

For these reasons, I advocate the use of Internet with a cap ‘I’. However, others may prefer the lower case ‘internet’ for their own reasons.

Whatever you use, cap ‘I’ or lowercase ‘i’, be consistent and stick with one or the other.

More editorial advice from Sue Stevens

More info on writing for the web

Need an editor?

Want someone to write for the web?

Want a whole new website?

Contact Sue at Bold Type for a free appraisal of your needs.

The latest website developed by Bold Type

We’ve just finished working on our latest website for Do Duck Inn, a café and catering company in Adelaide.

This website uses a Wordpress template that the client liked. By using a template as the basis of the website, the cost of web design is cut to zero. Bold Type work focused on building the wireframes with the new content written by our writers, finding the right images from photolibriaries and inhouse stock photos, adding the company’s branding and modifying the Wordpress backend (admin) to suit the client’s needs.

We encountered some interesting problems in terms of web hosting and domain name redirection, but we sorted through the labyrinth and organised a simpler system for the client. We moved the hosting to Webcity which will save about $20.00 per month of web hosting. And because the business is an Australian business rather than global, we moved the website from the .com URL to .com.au.

The client loves his new website and it’s working already to bring in new business. From two catering enquiries a day, he’s now getting between eight to ten consistently. That’s what we love to hear at Bold Type.

See more websites designed and developed by Bold Type.

Visit the Do Duck Inn website.

Individualised websites built by the Bold Type web design and development team

Having a website that tells the story of your business, that reflects the essence of what your business means to your clients – this is the new black in website design and construction.

Sure, there are website templates on the market and they have their purpose. But if you want your website to stand out from the crowd with an individualised design that captures attention immediately and then is easy to navigate – an individually designed website works best.

It’s what we at Bold Type do best – making your business website attract the right attention.

Call Bold Type today for a free analysis of your existing website and how we can improve your website: call Sue on 0410 037 635 or send an email.

Read some testimonials from our clients or see our website portfolio that has just some of the websites designed and developed by Bold Type.