Website for Business

Your website is the most efficient salesperson you'll ever have! It works while you're sleeping and travelling abroad. When the cat (you) is away ... this mouse doesn't play. Your Internet sales rep is available 24x7x365! It doesn't need a pension and doesn't call in sick.

A profitable website is much more involved than a nice-looking website that gets a lot of traffic. The architecture of a successful business website takes skill and know-how and when designed properly, it also answers questions, encouraging people to buy.

Customer satisfaction is rule #1: Help your clients find their perfect solution quickly and easily on your website.

Our web design techniques blend functionality and design to give you a search engine-friendly website that loads quickly and is easy to use, and more importantly, your online sales rep interacts with (potential) clients in a friendly and efficient way, increasing your credibility and sales figures.

Contact us today for your Internet sales rep!

Below are some tips that are pertinent to business websites. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or to ask for a no-obligation quote to design your profitable website.

Choosing your domain name

Where possible, we recommend that a business registers a number of domain names. Firstly, you should register your company's name with a .com and preferably one with your country code (e.g. .nl or .co.uk). It's not necessary to have a separate website for each domain, as one can be forwarded to the other.

If your business has unrelated activities, then it's better to use different domain names and to run separate websites. Your main company website can then describe the different activities and provide direct links to these other websites. Another option for domain names, is to use sub-domains. This allows you to have completely different websites under one domain name.

For example, our holding website is located at http://www.marvic.biz. This web design site is housed at http://webdesign.marvic.biz. We use http://streetwires.marvic.biz to promote handcrafted wire art in South Africa.

Choosing the right key words

As mentioned on the page Plan Your Website, key words are an integral part of your website design. This is how people find your website. We help our clients find the best key words to describe what they offer.

What will your website look like?

Firstly, it must reflect your business and what you offer. We work closely with our clients to ensure they are totally proud and delighted with the look and feel of their website.

Colour schemes - we suggest layouts based on the information we gather from our clients, but any preferred colours for fonts, menus, content and backgrounds can also be given using HEX and RGB numbers.

Fonts - there are just a few fonts that are standard on every pc, so we use these fonts for important content: arial, verdana, sans-serif, georgia and times new roman. If you don't mind if your website appears totally different on a client's computer, then you're welcome to choose your own font.

Layout - it might be simple and boring, but having a header on top, a menu on the left hand side and your content on the right hand side works. People can easily find and get what they're looking for. That our goal, right?

How many pages should your website have?

Your website can be very detailed, with one product per page, or it can offer an overview that lists products with little thumbnail pictures. The size of your website, in relation to your budget, is determined by what your website does, how much information it gives, how many products / services are listed, and more.

Budget tip: you can reduce the cost of web design by having a catalogue in .pdf format on your website, which can be uploaded monthly or quarterly as required. This means that there's one static page on your website describing your products in general, and a link to the catalogue describing them in detail, for your website visitors to download. If your budget is extremly low, check out our article "Do I need a professionally-designed website?"

Successful websites make use of clear photographs, good information, easy online ordering, clear company policies and guarantees. Videos and instruction manuals also enhance your customer's experience, making them more inclined to order from you.

We'd like YOU to have a successful website that fulfils it's unique purpose, where:

1. your website attracts your best clients, and
2. it's easy for people to get what they're looking for.

Give your customers a hassle-free experience that will make them want to come back ... and share it with their friends.

Contact us today to discuss your website needs!

Case Study - MARVIC VOF

Our business is called Marvic VOF, which is a logical name for the partnership between Marcel and Victoria Koning (VOF stands for Vennootschap Onder Firma and roughly means partnership). We registered http://www.marvic.biz and initially used it to house "Tours and Tales".

At the time, we also registered http://www.toursandtales.com, which automatically forwarded any traffic (called auto-forward / 301 redirect) to marvic.biz. We're moving the content from marvic.biz to toursandtales.com because it's easier for people to remember our travel and writing website by this domain name.

We also housed our Dutch flooring website under this domain. But it turns out that "Marvic" isn't a great name to have in the Netherlands, as it gets pronounced as marr-fich, and many people associate it with the threat of looming East-Europeans. We then created a Dutch website called www.floorstyle.nl. It was the right call and is now very profitable.

Our www.marvic.biz website acts as a portfolio and lists our various activities, websites, contact details and legal notices.