Tag Archives: Small Business

Website Launch: All Surface Painting

Web Designs

It was great working with Jed in developing a responsively designed site to showcase the excellent painting and staining services his business offers.

The website’s purpose is to showcase the many different services that can be completed, such as interior painting, texture painting and full wood home restorations to name just a few.  It will also showcase projects that he has already completed for many satisfied customers, including reviews to round out this project.

The site also features a custom embedded photo gallery of the existing Photo Album tied to the customers Facebook Page. This is important in any business that is portraying services and, many times, first impressions online.

Take a moment and check out his new website at https://allsurfacepaintingwi.com/.    You may find this is the service you been looking for.

Northwoods Web Designs provides all the services needed to give new businesses the online presence they need with a website design that effectively showcases products or services they have to offer.

Services provided by northwoodswebdesigns.com:  Web Design, Web Hosting, Web Care Plan, Responsive Web Development, SSL Certificate Services

Don’t Be Scammed – Ignore the Apple ID Has Been Locked Email

Security, Spam Hall Of Shame

Here is another example of scammers trying to prey on the folks least expecting it. This time, it is the beloved and dedicated Apple users.

An Apple ID is an important piece of authentication when it comes to apple products. It is used on your Macbook Air, your ipod’s your Apple iPhones, access to the App Store and iTunes Store and more. Its what connects you to the Apple cloud.

So when a letter comes through, like this one which actually made it through spam filters, stating your Apple ID is locked and you have to visit the link to unlock you quickly, you might just do that without thinking twice.

But before you do, always call or visit the Apple’s site by manually typing in the Apple’s website (https://www.apple.com/).





So our clients have been receiving these in the mail. Your probably thinking, wait how does this relate to website stuff? Well plenty, considering over 50% of the users searching the web and visiting websites is all done on those smartphones. And 1/2 of those smart phones are some type of iPhone.

So we want to provide this information to protect you, whether you are a client of ours or not for your reference. Here is the word for word mailing that you may receive. Hoping you are finding this from searching, ultimately protecting yourself from this spam company.
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How to Increase Purchase Conversion Rate to Buy Your Products – eCommerce Store

Web Wise, Website Tips

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.

Don’t Be Scammed – Ignore The iDNS Domain Registrar Spam Letter

Security, Spam Hall Of Shame

From time to time, some of Northwoods Web Designs (NWD) clients as well as ourselves, receive letters from fraudulent domain registrars who prey on people who don’t fully understand the domain registration service by sending letters in the mail about their expiring domain and requests payment.

We get asked about these from our clients, which tells me they have clearly deceived their letters pretty well to try to trick some domain owners into thinking a domain renewal invoice.

So I first wrote about this a couple of years ago, but my clients and myself are still receiving these. Which is a problem. Why? Because it means many of you are still falling for the scam and paying United Arab Emirates 300-500% higher cost to own the registration to your domain.





Why is this considered Spam? Because its unsolicited (you didn’t ask for it) and is a fraudulently deceiving letter, making you think the worlds going to end if you don’t transfer your domain name to them. In which after they own your domain name registration, they can jack your price higher/hold your domain hostage to force you to pay.

So we want to provide this information to protect you, whether you have registered your domain name with Northwoods Web Designs or some other provider. Here is the word for word mailing that you may receive. Hoping you are finding this from searching, ultimately protecting yourself from this spam company.

These companies who send these letters, such as iDNS,  attempt to convince you into transferring or renewing your domain using their service. Which on average is 500% above the market rate for domain name services. 
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Official Social Media Platform Checklist for SEO ROI

Website Tips

After launching a new website you thought your were done right? Unfortunately this is not the year 2000 and the internet and competition has evolved. Last check, there was over 600 million websites competing to be in top searches.

Think of a website as a pretty nice house to look at and use. But its currently missing a driveway, some nice trees, landscaping and maybe garage and of course maintenance like painting or staining the deck. Are those all necessary, well not really, but without them its not as useful or nice of a house to look at and utilize.




With that analogy, we need to bring up the landscaping and maintenance to keep the house humming nicely along. The following list of items should be ongoing tasks to make sure your website has more curb appeal to the major search engines so they continually rank you higher then others, with less curb appeal.

Good thing is, most of these items are free. It only takes a little elbow grease to get a good ROI in your Search Engine Optimization investment.

  • Update your blog (you have a blog right?) on your website at least monthly. Recommended is weekly.
  • Review / Update your website pages at least quarterly to keep them fresh, (i.e. new staff member? updated services? change of wording to keep it fresh)
    • TIP. There are content writers that specialize in crafting awesome content. Sometimes if your not sure what to write, using there services could be of great value.
  • Update your Social Media Platforms at least monthly. Although weekly is recommended
    • Facebook: Provide short excerpt of a blog and link back to your blog post
    • Twitter: Provide even shorter excerpt and link back to your blog (or other page on your website)
    • YouTube: If you have products or services, take a video and post it to your YouTube channel, then of course share the link on your other platforms
    • LinkedIn: This is the professional social media platform, great use when looking for employees and to promote your business
    • Instagram & Pinterest: Use one or both, but simply put, submit some nice pictures of your products or services offered with a short description 20 words or less.
  • Update online business directories to assure they are using your correct phone number, company hours, address and of course website URL is listed. These are more of the popular ones. You may have to register, but for each one you update, it gives you a free link back to your website. Nothing wrong with that.
  • Obtain inbound links from other websites that are credible. If you work with a vendor or 3rd party where your services end up benefiting them or mutually beneficial, ask if they would like to link to your website or even a blog post from there site.

As you can see, optimizing your website isn’t easy or quick, or a one time thing. But doing these will put your website in the forefront of all others who decided to skip over these tips.

Are there any tips or items that I am missing? Would love to build upon this one for all the small business and non-profits out there that could really use some help in this arena.