Sauce Software Blog

Seven tips to embrace your business on the web.

1. Make your website a daily tool
   Make your website a visited daily tool for your clients. A clear communication objective will help them  look for the information they require,  avoiding a phone call or waiting for a response. Your website is there to help clients everyday.
2. Identify your relationship with your visitors
   Why are they visiting your website, by studying your website traffic can give some clues on popularity of the different pages. This will help with building a sustainable relationship, and over time you’ll understand what works for opt-in and sales conversion.
3. Make it easy for your visitor to find the right information
   Visitors search for information in different ways, examples of the different search functions which should be on your website are;
   - Search function toolbar
   - Easy navigational menus
   - Categorised content
   - Uncomplicated and easy to use design flow
4. Let your visitor interact with your website
   Make your website the main area where clients or potential clients can contribute through comments, wikis, blogs , forums and  have available open feedback tools for honest input.
5. Make the content suit your visitor
   By categorising the content, visitors can choose by themselves what is important. You can also adjust content after the visitors have searched on Google. By understanding their search terms,  provides you with more clues on their buying patterns.
6. Make your website available through multiple channels
   Let your website accept traffic and leads from any other channels, like the following, different mail groups, partners and suppliers websites, e-marketing lists or RSS feeds.
7. Integrate your website with your business process
   Make your website become a natural part of your business processes, that way there will be no additional work required to keep your website up to date and alive.

Take your business heart to the web

For further information or if you would like to discuss your online requirements, contact Emma Puttick at Sauce Software.

P.S Keep your eyes open for the next Sauce newsletter with information about the new SauceOpen platform to be released shortly.

Emma Puttick

Tags: business, content, process, website ideas

Spring is well and truly in bloom now, and while you’re taking care of all your other business activities, have you been putting off a website spring clean?

… It’s not as hard as you might think to give your site content a creative lift and draw more interest by your site visitors. Here are a few important design tips to make your pages clearer, interesting and give that polished and professional look overall.

1. Graphical Appeal

Carry through your message in images.

It might sound like a no-brainer tip, but adding some well selected graphics or photos to your pages is great for evoking a response from your potential customers or info-seekers.

• Select some small photos to break up large blocks of text and try to make them as relevant to the text as possible.
• You can get your article’s text to wrap nicely around the image by using the editor’s image align options in the SauceOpen CMS.
• Where do you get images? – try istockphoto.com

This is a great way to attract a potential customer’s eye to a block of text; Putting in a catchy graphic near your critical sales point or call to action is a definite winner.

2. Are you listening? – Put Up Some Signs

In the way that we add images for allure, we can also use a tried and true technique often called signposting – put simply it’s the use of graphical elements, indention and blocking, bullets or numbering, or text styles such as bold and italic that makes your content much crisper and lucid.

1. People on the web have a VERY short attention span! so numbers and bullets are fantastic to use as people may skim most of the text, but bullets are usually read.
2. Bold and italic emphasis should be used within reason, but when really hammering home a point – are essential.

Continue reading “Don’t put off a spring spruce!”

Tags: tips, web design, website ideas

Recently, there has been noise made about businesses feeling like they have to make cuts to their budget and our customers have been looking for more cost effective ways to market their business. An essential part of your business marketing strategy is having a web window. Once you are on this technology wave, there are a few quick fixes to improve your business website stickiness…

Here are some reminder tips to look at for your website, to keep customers coming back to you:

• Look at the experts in your field and note what they are doing to attract customers.
• Find words and phrases that you connect with and adapt them to your site.
  
• Customise these words and phrases until they become your own.
• Be sure your most important content is placed high on the page so visitors to your site will see it.

Continue reading “Never too late for the web!”

Tags: content, tips, website ideas