Greetings Fellow Gastronomes!
A feast of delights awaits you this month, but we start by sharing the love with a new Mr and a new Mrs on the team.
Mr Mike O'Sullivan joins us in Christchurch from the mean streets of Reading in the UK. Mike's our new Business Development guy and will be looking after all new and existing accounts. If you want to commission any of our services, simply contact Mike.
Steph switches from Miss Beecher to Mrs Kendall, after a sun-kissed wedding on the shores of Lake Wanaka (ahh). When she's not polishing up the bling on her ring, it's business as usual in Web promotions and Web writing.
Now find out more about incentivising your customers to take action and getting the best out of Web design, relish some savoury tidbits and get a taste of the fruits of our labours.
Get Your Site Visitor To Take Action
This month, we're talking about 'calls to action' that can help you make the most of your Web pages. A strong and effective call to action should literally persuade a site visitor looking at your Web page to take action.
It pays to spend some time thinking carefully about what call to action you want on every single page of your Web site and what you really want people to do on your Web site. It's amazing how many companies forget that people need to know (and want to know) what to do next and get easily frustrated online when it's not super-obvious.
You can use calls to action, such as these listed, not only to get your customer to take action, but to help direct your customer around your Web site and encourage them to get off the home page and explore more of your Web site:
- Sign up to our newsletter
- Contact us for more information
- View more information about our Search Engine Optimisation Services
- Get your free quotation today!
- Buy / book / email / phone now
Making Calls to Action More Effective
To make your calls to action stronger and more effective, you can incentivise your site visitor to take action. Incentivised calls to action can be styled like this:
- Sign up to our newsletter for free tips and advice on marketing your business.
- Contact us today and get your free copy of Pea Growers Weekly.
- Book before the end of April and receive 3 tins of peas for the price of 2!
If you're interested in revamping the calls to action on your Web site, contact us. We're bursting with marketing ideas!
Achieve Maximum Web Design Impact
When you talk to a Web designer about revamping an existing or building a new Web site, you may, or may not, have a vision of what you want in mind. If you do, you'll need to clearly communicate your vision. If you don't, talk to your Web designer, who should be able to inspire you!
Realising What You're Visualising
It's important to brief your designer as well as you can, because no matter how talented, creative or intuitive they are, there is every chance that what they create will be slightly different from what you first imagined. At Avatar, we start this briefing process with a Web design questionnaire. This questionnaire gives you the opportunity to tell us about your business and your target market, so we have a clear understanding of what you want from your Web site and what you like about Web sites.
Your Web designer should be aiming to give your business maximum impact on the Web. They may ask you (like we do) to provide as much detail and material as possible to keep them on the right design lines. This material may include:
- Information about your target market (e.g. age, gender, income, marital status)
- High quality logo
- High quality, relevant and engaging images
- Well-written and proofed text
- References for fonts and colours (brand guidelines and style guides)
- Samples of your existing promotional material, such as brochures, business cards, postcards, letterhead
- Examples of design styles you particularly like (brochures, print ads or other Web sites)
Let Your Designer Do Their 'Thang'
Do let your designer 'design' your Web site. After all, that's the expertise, experience, creativity and technical know-how you're paying for.
Many designers will create a design concept or blueprint for your site, before they actually build it. A concept is a graphic representation of the look and feel of your site created using logos, navigation, text, images, buttons and icons in specific sizes, fonts and colours. Make sure you're happy with your site concept, because it can sometimes be a costly exercise to take down the nuts and bolts of a site that's already built to start again.
View our design work in our Web design portfolio. If you want to revamp an existing Web site or commission a new Web design, contact us.
Sites of Interest
Here's a selection of sites we've designed, updated and/or promoted recently...
- Merino Lace (design and promotion)
A New Zealand collection of exquisite merino clothing from the McAuslin label including high-quality, hand-crafted knitted garments which make stylish and timeless gifts for women and men, of any age.
- Independent Property Finders (update)
IPF provide residential property services in Christchurch, Canterbury and New Zealand including residential real estate search, find and check services to facilitate buying or renting property in New Zealand.
- Roundhill Ski Area (update)
New Zealand ski field and snowboard resort with skiing and snowboarding areas in Tekapo.
- Sea Change Rarotonga (update)
Luxury Cook Island beach bungalow accommodation, Sea Change Rarotonga offers beachfront self-contained villas perfect for resort style vacations or honeymoons.
- Victoria Ski Sport (update)
Leading ski shop in Christchurch offers ski hire, snowboard hire, new and second hand products, news, newsletter, snow reports and competitions.
- Max Security (promotion)
Burglar alarms, CCTV security cameras, dvr surveillance systems for home, office, life style block, farm, vehicle and commercial properties from New Zealand specialists in security and CCTV surveillance systems.
- Timspec (promotion)
Timspec specialises in the import and wholesale of a wide range of timbers to manufacturers, joiners, furniture manufacturers and building supply merchants throughout New Zealand.
- Canterbury UPP Club (free hosting)
A peer support club for teenagers and young adults who have Down's Syndrome.
