Category Archives: Web Wise

Disadvantages of using Yellow Book/HIBU pages for Your Online Web Presence

Computer Tips, Web Wise
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No Yellowbook

In the past (many moons ago), Yellow Pages, Yellow Book or HIBU have been a great way to advertise and promote your business to a large audience.

Then came the internet and it went to the web as yellow pages websites.  However, over the past several years there has been a decline in these types of websites and for good reason due to the following disadvantages vs traditional web design firm or professional services:

Not Owning Your Website: This is probably one of the most important disadvantage of owning a yellow page website is that you are basically renting it from the yellow page company and do not actually own it.



In other words, you are paying a yearly rental to the yellow page company to host your website. To this regards you would lose your website if you dropped out of the program or don’t renew your contract.

Not Owning Your Domain Name: When registering your website (that WWW URL that distinguishes you from the rest) through a yellow page/HIBU company, you are essentially not the owner of your domain name .

Yellow page essentially owns the rights to that name, for minimum of a year. They say they will release it and transfer the ownership (generally for a price) after the contract is up but will do everything in their power to make sure you continually pay the expensive monthly fees for hosting and domain name.

They will also tell you how important it is to maintain your advertisement in the big thick yellow physical book that everyone tosses away, unless your in your 70’s, which is probably not the target audience you’re looking for.

And not only does transferring the ownership of the domain name cost money but they have the upper hand and it can possibly lead to legal issues if you no longer want your website with them.

Immensely Expensive Option: It is vital to note that by owning (renting) your website via yellow pages you have to pay an initial cost for creation and hosting along with paying a rather expensive yearly rental fee to stay in the program.  The cheapest monthly options they have are still 70% higher than our monthly hosting fees.


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What is Google My Business Listing and its Benefits?

Search Engine Optimization, Web Wise
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Google My Business is a free tool by Google that allows businesses to create and manage their online presence across various Google platforms, including search engine results and Google Maps.

It enables businesses, or agencies such as Northwoods Web Designs, to control the information that appears in their listing, such as their address, phone number, website, hours of operation, photos, and reviews. With a Google My Business listing, businesses can enhance their visibility, attract more customers, and engage with their audience through posts, messaging, and Q&A features.

What are some benefits of a well-managed Google My Business Listing?

Increased online visibility: With a Google My Business listing, businesses can appear in local search results and Google Maps, making it easier for potential customers to find your business and providing another boost to your website.

Improved organic rankings: Having a verified Google My Business listing can improve the overall SEO (search engine optimization) of a business’s online presence, helping it achieve higher organic rankings in search results.

Accurate business information: Businesses can ensure that their address, phone number, website, and other important details are accurate and up to date, making it easier for customers to contact or visit them.

Customer reviews and ratings: Google My Business allows customers to leave reviews and ratings, which can help build trust and credibility for businesses.
Positive reviews can also attract more customers, while negative reviews provide an opportunity for businesses to address concerns and improve their offerings.

Business insights and analytics: Google My Business provides various insights and analytics, such as the number of views, calls, and clicks to your website, allowing businesses to track their online performance and make data-driven decisions.

Additional business information: Businesses can share more information about their products, services, special offers, and upcoming events through posts, which are displayed directly in their Google My Business listing

We always advise our customers to take ownership of their Google My Business Listings. With our Web Care Plans, Northwoods Web Designs is also able to act as our customer’s agency and maintain it for them.

If you have any questions or feedback on this, please leave a comment below, or send us a message.

How to Increase Purchase Conversion Rate to Buy Your Products – eCommerce Store

Web Wise, Website Tips
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Launching a website to sell products is an exciting time for any business. Especially a new business. You have a product, or products, you know is great, many have told you so, and now you want to open it up to the world.

So ideally you contact us to provide you a professional turn-key eCommerce site that puts you in the right direction.

But one of the first things that new businesses find out when launching a website to sell products is that sometimes its hard to get folks to buy the products, that you know is great.




Just because you have a great product and suburb designed website, like the ones we build, there are still many factors that play into the purchasing decision of the visitors.

Even if your sales are pretty decent, it comes to a point where you view the website analytics (which we provide with our Web Care Services Plans ), and would like to increase the conversion rate.

What do you mean conversion rate? 

Let me explain. Say in a period of a month, your website analytics shows you had 200 visitors, but you know you only had 10 customer purchases. In short this translates into you having about 190 folks that visited your site and decided not to make a purchase.

Which all honestly, that may be fine, as some may be landing on the site just wanting to know more, and are now shopping around. Eventually they may come back. Or it could be competitors checking the site with never an intent to purchase.  So take the numbers with a grain of salt.

You want to increase this conversion rate (who wouldn’t), but how?

We have compiled our tips we have provided in the past and include them below for free (some folks will charge for this marketing consultation).  So try these suggestions one at a time to validate what is working, and what doesn’t. Or implement all of them to get the most out of your eCommerce sales.

  • Make Sure You are Leveraging Sale Prices
    • Many eCommerce sites, like the ones we build, provide functionality so you can add a regular price and a sales price. Make sure to leverage them.
    • Consumers like feeling like they are getting a savings, regardless if they actually are. Its called consumer optics.
  • Temporary Decrease the Price of Product(s)
    • Competition/pricing play a major role in successfully selling like products on the market.
    • For testing pricing conditions, you can drop the prices by 25% for a period of one month and see if there is a change.
    • If you see sales increase, you may have found that your normal price is a price that folks are not willing to pay for the product.
    • One trick, is to reduce your product to fit in that price range. If your price that was not selling including 10 items, change the product to only include 7 and keep it at the 25% reduced price that seemed to sell.
  • Entice Folks with Coupon Functionality (price discounts)
    • Everybody likes surprise discounts
    • We can build in the coupon functionality into any site, where a gentle (one-time per visit) pop-up occurs either having them email for a coupon, or presenting the coupon immediately, forcing them to continue to purchase to save money.
    • Keep the pop-ups minimal, and keep in mind, many folks are utilizing mobile devices so it must be done well, and don’t aggravate the visitor with additional pop-ups, scroll things or other things. The website should sell itself as is (if built by Northwoods Web Designs).
  • Promote the Darn Thing
    • This isn’t a baseball field, just because you build it, does not guarantee they will come.
    • Want more free marketing advice? Make sure check out the Official Social media Platform Checklist for Best SEO & ROI of your eCommerce Site.
    • If your selling food products, get out and go to trade shows or the like that are related to the products you sale.
    • Get your business card out there, get the word, many of the biggest sites on the internet started from local word of mouth which drove sales online and eventually spread.

Hopefully these tips and suggestions will prove useful. If there are any additional ones you think should be added, please leave a comment.

Important Notice Expiration Notice For Your Domain Scam

Security, Spam Hall Of Shame, Web Wise
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As we know there are people all over the world using different unethical tactics to try to obtain money from unsuspecting victims. Some do it without actually breaking the law. Such as leveraging these bogus domain expiration emails that are pouring in to unsuspecting business owners email accounts.

If you received a similar email such as the one below, and wondering what you should do, read on to find out more.

First, how are they getting all your companies information? Well that is easy, as every domain name registered displays the registrants personal email, company address, phone number to the public.

You can find your public listed information by typing in your domain name at the official ICANN Domain Name Registrar site: https://whois.icann.org/en Unless you purchase additional services to hide it or have a reputable web firm registrar it on your behalf, its fair game.  We offer both secure domain registration options for our clients.

These folks that send these emails scrape the internet for this public information, even get triggered when new domains are registered so they have all the info needed, including your name, email address, home address and when the domain expires, which is all used against you.

Next, they add fear and limited time to the equation. The whole email structure is to capture fear that something is going to happen if you don’t respond. So the next step is to have you quickly read the headings, since they know your busy and don’t have time to read the whole thing.

They figure you know you need a domain name to properly display your website (and keep your email working), so they state its going to expire.

Here is the fine print:

This important expiration notification notifies you about the expiration notice of your domain registration for yourdomain.org search engine optimization submission. The information in this expiration notification may contain confidential and/or legally privileged information from the notification processing department of the Domain Seo Service Registration to purchase our search engine traffic generator. We do not register or renew domain names. We are selling traffic generator software tools. This information is intended for the use of the individual(s) named above.If you fail to complete your domain name registration yourdomain.org search engine optimization service by the expiration date, may result in the cancellation of this search engine optimization domain name notification notice.

But in reality, its a ploy to buy some type of SEO service service, which they don’t explain what that entails unlike our SEO service page.  I have tracked many of these types of emails coming from mail servers located in other countries outside the US.

So what do you do if you receive an email like this and its not from your website hosting or domain services provider? Simply delete it and/or mark it as spam in your email client.

What happens if you did fall for this and send them money for it? Technically consider it a lesson learned. As they will not provide a refund and they keep changing the company and email these come from to prevent action taken on them.

Hopefully this provides a little insight on these types of scam emails targeting specifically to business and non-profits that have websites.

Let us know if you have received a similar email or if you know of anyone who actually signed up for this in the comments below.

So You Thought About Creating Your Own Site From A Website Template Builder Site?

Web Wise
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build-your-own-website-is-not-easyThere are several companies that are out there that are happy to take your money (Wix / 1and1 / others) claiming you can build your own site using their build-a-website tools. They market intensively to consumers and businesses, telling them that they can build their own website and consumers will mysteriously com

That’s hog wash and totally misleading. If you build it, consumers will not come.

Of course, you can build your own website. You could probably also design your own clothes and build your own furniture as well. But of course you wouldn’t because your clothes and furniture well would probably suck.
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