Common Small Business Web Site Problems

Common Web Design MistakesIn our years of experience, we have seen a huge variety of small business web site problems. In this post, we discuss the most urgent problems we see as we work on small business web site design in Boise, Idaho.

Although most small businesses today have web sites, they are usually not doing as much work for the company as they could. Most people think that if they have a clean, modern looking web page with a phone number and address, then their presence on the web is up to par. Some companies might even go out of their way to create a mobile version of their site. Unfortunately, such organizations are failing to see the bigger picture: Small business web sites should be built to generate new client leads. This is what will ultimately increase your profits.

Here at Simple CMS Design, we work to create the best small business web sites in Boise, Idaho.. We are here to help you through every step of online marketing in Boise, Idaho. From Boise web design to search engine optimization and content writing, we are here help you increase your conversion rates. Our goal is to help your business grow and expand.

Read more: Common Small Business Web Site Problems

Deciding What You're Worth

What's my business worth?Lately, we've noticed some small business owner's who were are designing websites for are confused about who their company is regarding their pricing.  We find alot of people saying that they can't compete on price anymore because there are too many other companies that are underbidding everything and their prices are below margin or some ridiculously low number that doesn't even make sense on how they can make a living charging.

Say our client, let's call them Reputable Services, has been in business for 15 years and stands by their product/services, treats their customers well, and was lucky enough to be around when the economy was looking nice.  Business used to be great and then the economy went bad.  Now let's say that Reputable Services now is in the position where they must go out and find new business.  

Read more: Deciding What You're Worth

Add Image Alt Tags to Virtuemart - Category Followup

So last time we discussed how to add image all tags to good ol' Virtuemart 1.1x's products. Now I know we are up to Virtuemart 2 (which I am really excited about but haven't had anytime to delve into) but I know there are alot of shop owners out there that have modified Virtuemart 1.1x so much that they are very nervous about migrating to Virtuemart 2 at this time. I'm right there with you guys.

So for the rest of us stubborn people that haven't made the upgrade here's how to add image alt tags to the category pages.

Read more: Add Image Alt Tags to Virtuemart - Category Followup

Wow! Is that a new website?

The short answer is yes.

We've decided to fully remodel our web design.  The new design should be much more friendly to new visitors who may be looking for our web design services or are interest in downloading Joomla! extensions.  The new design has a completely dynamic templating system provided by Rockettheme that allows us to choose colors with the click of a button.  Does anyone see a Simple CMS Design holiday look in the future?  

The new design will also allow us to further expand our website and have it look great.  Many Joomla! components have built in CSS.  Unfortunately, some of the developers of these great extensions don't always think of the potential problems that high priority CSS styling might cause.  Such as telling a template with a dark theme to have a large white content area.  Maybe the template has it's font color settings to white as well.  White text on white backgrounds doesn't work for the user - it can even get your site banned from Google!

Read more: Wow! Is that a new website?

Add Image Alt Tags to Virtuemart

A customer recently approached me with a very important "oversight" on the developers side for Virtuemart < 1.1.8. It seems that there is no way to add custom image alt tags to product images. By default, Virtuemart does add alt tags automatically, them being the product name. The problem is that sometimes if your products have punctuation in their names, then the alt tags don't display properly. Or maybe more important, if you are pursuing search engine optimization with your Virtuemart website. So I did some digging into the Virtuemart forums and found that no one had a good fix for adding custom alt tags to product images. So here is my latest gift:

Read more: Add Image Alt Tags to Virtuemart

Quote Time?

Login Form