• Calendar
• Calls to Action
• Classes
• Content
• Email Marketing
• Facebook General
• Facebook Advertising
• Facebook Cover Photo
• Facebook Posts
• Final Touches
• Forms
• Google Analytics
• Homepage
• Images

• Links
• Navigation
• Pinterest
• Products
• Shortcuts
• Slideshows
• Social Media
• Tables
• Text / Fonts
• Videos

Calendar

• If classes or events are a large part of your business, be sure to put a calendar preview on your home page. (5.14.12)
• When you add items to your calendar, make sure you include all the info people need – directions to event, price of event, hours, etc. Also include pictures to make it fun! (5.18.12)

Calls to Action

• Make sure your call to action is above the fold. This means that someone would not have to scroll down on your website to see it. (3.11.13)
• When creating a call to action button on a webpage, make sure you use a color that contrasts well with the rest of the page, but that also fits the website's overall color scheme. (4.8.13)
• Consider choosing a warm color for your call to action button. Warm colors appear closer to the viewer and stand out more. (4.8.13)
• Make sure your call to action - whether it be a link, button, form, etc. - isn't on top of a busy background. (4.10.13)
• If you have 2 calls to action, use a button for the more important one and a hyperlink for the less important one. (4.11.13)
• If your call to action is for visitors to watch a video, use a related shape in your button - a video camera, a play button, etc. (3.12.13)
• Studies show the human eye looks at the left side of the webpage first. If you can, place your call to action on the left side of your webpage. (4.12.13)
• Put great photos of products near your calls to action. This will draw the customer's attention and get them to look at your call to action. (3.13.13)
• Be sure to have a good amount of space around your call to action so it stands out and is easy to see. (3.14.13)
• If your call to action is a sign up, form, etc., be sure to tell customers that it is a quick and easy process. (1.4.13)
• Draw attention to your call to action with arrows or with photographs in which the people's eyes are looking toward your call to action. (3.15.13)

Classes

• Get customers excited to sign up for your classes by posting pictures of previous classes. Showing pictures of real people gives your website and business a more personal feel. (1.15.13)
• Get testimonials from people who have taken your classes and include them in your class descriptions. (1.16.13)
• Highlight the teacher(s) in your class descriptions and tell about their experience and why customers should want to learn from them. (1.17.13)
• Have a button on your home page that takes customers to a place where they can sign up for classes. (1.18.13)

Content

• Make sure all of your products have great product descriptions. When you shop, what do you want to know? Put yourself in the place of the customer and your product descriptions will be better and your traffic and sales will improve. (1.21.13)
• Make sure your website has a great about us page. Include great pictures, bios of your staff, the history of your store, and whatever you think people want to see. Show your personality. Search engines want to see websites that are run by real people. This will also help engage your customers and therefore increase traffic and sales. (1.22.13)
• Make sure your home page has a great welcome message. What do you want to make sure visitors know about your business right away? Tell them about popular products, classes, services, etc. (3.1.13)
• Make sure your contact us page is updated with your hours and all the information customers need to contact you, including your social media information and perhaps a map. (1.25.13)
• The best way to gain attention from search engines, get links to your website, and increase your traffic is to have great content on your website. Start adding a new page to your website each month (or more often). This content must be original and can include videos, text, images, or whatever else you can think of. Be creative and share something unique. (1.23.13)
• Make sure you double check your spelling and grammar when you put text on your website. Having poor spelling and grammar can hurt your search engine rankings. (1.24.13)

Email Marketing

• Next to your email/newsletter sign up, be sure to give people a good reason to sign up. Offer coupons, sales information, etc. Our system will also allow you to give them a free quilt pattern (provided by us) when they sign up. Giving customers a reason to give you their email is key and will help your sales. (2.11.13)
• Make sure your visitors can sign up for your newsletter right on your home page. Don’t make them click to another page to sign up. The more work they have to do or clicks they have to go through, the less likely they are to sign up. (2.12.13)
• When you send emails to your customers, be sure to include a call to action. This should be a link to your online store, your new product, your sales items, etc. Giving people an easy way to get to your products is crucial to the success of your email marketing. (2.13.13)
• Make sure you take the time to write a good subject title for the email you send to your customers. You have to compete with a full inbox for a busy person’s attention. What are some subject titles have you had success with? (2.14.13)
• When you send out your emails/newsletters be sure to send one out no more than once a week and send it on either a Tuesday or a Friday. You may want to do some testing for your specific audience. (2.15.13)

Facebook General

• Make sure you have a Facebook like button on your home page and that it is high up on the page where customers will see it easily. (2.4.13)
• Take opportunities to tell your customers you have a Facebook business page. Put it on business cards, in ads, and tell them in person. (2.8.13)
• As the administrator of your business page, you can select a unique url / username to help people find your page. Ours is Facebook.com/LikeSewWebsites. To learn more about this, go here - https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=174999945886703 (3.20.13)
• It's important to respond to every comment on your Facebook page, even and especially if it's negative. It's a great way to show the public your interaction with your customers. (2.6.13)
  
• When you respond to negative comments on your Facebook page, solve the problem publicly on your page, don't move to a private phone call or email if possible. By resolving it publicly, you will show everyone your great customer service. (2.5.13)
• Be sure to include your website address in your about section on your Facebook page. (2.7.13)
• It's a good idea to use your logo for your Facebook profile picture. This looks professional and spreads business awareness. (3.18.13)
• Make sure you have a Facebook like button and a link to your Facebook page on a prominent part on your homepage. (3.19.13)
• Be sure to put the Facebook Like Box on your contact us page. It shows customers that real people like and use your business. Here is a picture of ours. (12.13.12)
• Make sure your fans can easily get from your Facebook page to your website! The last thing you want is for fans to become interested in your products, but not be able to find a way to learn more about them. Include your url in your about section, in the description of your cover photo (not on the photo), or create a tab that links right to your website. (12.12.12)
• Make sure you follow Facebook guidelines. You CAN'T ever offer a prize to someone for liking your page or for clicking like or commenting on any post. You CAN run a contest or a giveaway using a third party app such as http://www.wildfireapp.com/ (3.21.13)
• Make sure you fill out the about section on your Business Facebook Page and that you include a link to your website. Make sure your description is short enough that the link will show up without people needing to click to read more. (3.22.13)

Facebook Advertising

• When using Facebook ads, be sure to look closely at the numbers they give you so you can keep track of how much each "like" or other goal is costing you. (11.23.12)
• If you are looking into Facebook advertising, choose sponsored stories. They work much better than regular Facebook ads because they often show up on the news feed rather than on the side with the ads. Most importantly, they show friend connections, thus increasing the likelihood that the person will like the page. (11.20.12)
• If you are creating a Facebook ad, be sure to use an image that is bright and will capture attention. Don't use an image that is too detailed or hard to see. Images of people work well. (11.19.12)
• Facebook ads can be a great way to increase your likes and get more business. There are many different types of ads that let you target users interested in your specific industry. There are also many inexpensive options. See if Facebook ads will work for your business. https://www.facebook.com/business/connect (8.23.12)

Facebook Cover Photo

• Take advantage of your cover page's description. Use it to guide people to your website by including a link to your website. If you type your website address including http://, Facebook will turn your address into a link. (4.22.13)
• Make sure to have a great cover photo on your Facebook Page and to change it every once in a while. (4.23.13)
• Make your Facebook Cover Photo about your customers. (8.27.12)
• Use your Facebook Cover Photo to highlight different seasons. (8.28.12)
• Use your Facebook Cover Photo to advertise for an event. Be careful to follow the Facebook guidelines. (8.29.12)
• Combine a great image and a testimonial to create an awesome Facebook Cover Photo. (4.24.13)
• Take advantage of your cover photo space by using it to show off your products. Include a link to those products in your cover photo description. (4.25.13)
  
• Use humor in your Facebook cover photo!  (9.3.12)
• Make a cool collage of photos your products/staff/store/etc. for your Facebook cover photo. (9.4.12)
• If it applies to your business, make a cool collage of the history of your business to show how long you've been around and use that collage for your Facebook cover photo. (9.5.12)
• Show your creativity by making your company name out of something cool and use it for your Facebook cover photo! (9.6.12)
• Use your Facebook cover photo to celebrate a holiday. Just make sure you don't leave it up past the holiday. (1.26.13)
• Highlght your fans in your cover photo. (1.28.13)

Facebook Posts

• It is vital to your Facebook success that you post on your page every day of the week (at least Mon-Fri). This is the only way to keep customers engaged and to convince Facebook that they should show what you post in news feeds. (3.25.13)
• Mix up the types of posts you put on your Facebook Page - post pictures, videos, statuses, links, etc. (3.26.13)
• If you want to draw attention to a certain Facebook post, click the "pin to top" button (click on the pencil in the upper right hand corner and it will appear as a dropdown option) and the post will stay at the top of your page for 7 days unless you unpin it before then. (3.27.13)
• If you'd like to highlight an item on your Facebook page timeline, click on the star in the upper right-hand corner. This will enlarge your post so its width expands to fill both columns. This works well for photos. (3.28.13)
  
• Of all types of posts, photos get the most response. Once in a while, find a creative way to use photos when you would normally just post a status. (3.29.13)
• Keep Facebook statuses short for a better response. (4.15.13)
• Post on your Facebook page when other businesses aren't posting on theirs - early morning, evening and, weekends. (4.16.13)
• To get a good response on your Facebook page, finish your status with a question, or make your status solely a question. (4.17.13)
• Many Facebook users use Facebook on their mobile device. To get to these users - post pictures. (4.19.13)
• One way to bring your Facebook fans into the store is to put a coupon on your Facebook page and have customers show it to you on their mobile device. (4.18.13)
• Take advantage of Facebook's scheduling option. It allows you to schedule Facebook posts to post at future dates and times. It is a great tool if you want to plan posts for weekends, while you are on vacation or if you just want to plan ahead. We love it! (5.2.13)
• Have fun with your Facebook fans and show your personality. (5.1.13)
• Engage with your Facebook fans by sharing something that they can relate to (it might be a sewing joke, a cartoon about scrapbooking, etc.). (4.30.13)
• Improve engagement on Facebook by asking your fans to fill in the blank (5.3.13)
• On your Facebook page, express gratitude for someone. (10.16.12)
• To get engagement on your Facebook page, post an image and ask your fans to write a caption to go with it. (10.15.12)

Final Touches

• Whenever you work on your website, be sure to look at it in all browsers (Firefox, IE, Chrome, Safari, etc.) to see it the way your customers will see it. (5.23.12)

Forms

• When you create a form on your website, use as few fields as possible. The more you ask from people, the less likely they are to complete the form. (10.22.12)
• When creating a form, make it easy to understand so people will have an easy time completing it. (10.24.12)
• When setting up forms on your website, include help text to guide the person filling out the form and only require information you absolutely have to. (7.5.12)
• When asking for information on your website, tell what the information is used for. This will make people more comfortable when giving you their information. (10.23.12)
• You can assess the success of your forms by using Google Analytics to compare the amount of unique visitors on your form page to the number of form submissions. (8.6.12)
• Another way to assess the success of your forms is to compare the number of forms submitted with the number of completed actions, for example the number of sales that came from those forms. (8.7.12)
• When creating a form with dropdown options, list the option you want the customer to choose first. (8.8.12)
• Do testing on your form pages to see what gets people to click "submit" - add images of your products, include a testimonial, or clear out the space around it. (8.9.12)
• To evaluate your form submissions, use our "download form submissions" option to get all of your submissions in an excel spreadsheet. This is an easy way to analyze your form submissions and look for weak or strong areas in your form. (8.10.12)
• If you can, place your entire form above the fold so customers can see the submit button without scrolling. This will make the form look easier to fill out. (10.26.12)
• When creating a form, be sure you don't have distractions on the page such as quicklinks or buttons to other places. Keep their attention focused on completing the form. (10.25.12)

Google Analytics

• Use Google Analytics to see where your website traffic comes from. You want to have a good variety of search engine, direct, and referral traffic. (7.16.12)
• If you want to increase your direct traffic (thereby letting search engines know you're a real live business), get the word out about your website by putting it on business cards, telling your customers, and taking opportunities to let people know about it. (7.17.12)
• Use Google Analytics to track the correlation between your traffic and your email marketing campaign. By doing this you can access which day and time is best to send out emails. (7.18.12)
• Use Google Analytics to find out what keywords that people have typed in search engines have lead them to your website. This information can help you learn what keywords to continue or start optimizing your website for. (7.19.12)
• Use Google Analytics to find out which of your pages are most popular. Once you login click on Content > Content Overview. This information can help you determine which pages you should put calls to action on as well as which pages need some attention. (7.20.12)

Homepage

• It's a good idea to put your phone number, and perhaps more contact information, in the header of your home page, depending on what looks good with your design. (5.6.13)
• Make sure you have a link on your home page to the number one thing you want customers to see - whether it be your sales items, featured products, new products, etc. (5.7.13)
• On your home page, have one main call to action – sign up for emails, shop now, etc. You may have others that aren’t as prominent, but by having one main one, you tell your customers what they should do. (5.8.13)
• Make sure you have a great welcome message on your home page that gives customers an overview of what makes your shop great. Include things like names of manufacturers, classes you offer, services you offer, etc. (5.9.13)
• Make sure you direct customers to your online store from your home page. Use a "shop now" button, a featured products image that links to your store, a what's new section, etc. (5.10.13)
• If you have a list of links on your home page (to products, your contact page, etc), make sure there are no more than 8 links. If you give customers too many options, they get overwhelmed and leave. (9.13.12)
  

Images

• Make sure you resize your website images so they have a small file size. This will increase load time and improve traffic. (3.22.12)
• When you insert images into a body of text, make sure to put space around your image so it is not crammed next to the text. This is easily done in our CMS under image properties. Doing this will improve the look, and therefore trustworthiness of your site. (3.23.12)
• When taking photos of products, it is best to have backgrounds with a similar theme. Experiment and see what would work well with your site. Maybe you want to take pictures of your products in nature, maybe in a home, or maybe you want to have no background, just a close up of the product. (4.16.12)
• Play around with cropping your photos. By cropping your photos, you can make a picture look more professional or more artistic and draw attention to specific details.(4.17.12)
• Try adding borders to your photos, some are better without them, but some will benefit from a nice thin black border (which can be added using our CMS) or another type of border (which you can add using photo editing software). (4.18.12)
• When you display several pictures without using a slideshow, make sure the top and bottom edges of pictures in the same row are even with one another. Use tables and crop or resize the images to make them look neat on the page. (4.19.12)
• If you are concerned about your images being stolen, you may want to include a watermark. You may not always need one, but in the right situations, they can be really helpful. Here is a website we suggest.  http://picmarkr.com/index.php (4.20.12)
• When adding photos to your website, try out some of these websites for fun effects like adding text, frames, shadows, and more. (We use them all the time:)) http://www.picmonkey.com/, http://pixlr.com/ (10.30.12)
• When you need photos of people on your website, try to use photos of real people, not stock images. You still want them to be good quality photos, but you want them to look more realistic. (10.29.12)

Links

• If you are creating a link that goes off of your website (eg. Facebook, blog, etc.), be sure to set the link to open in a new window. This will encourage people to stay on your website. (5.7.12)
• Always check your links to make sure they work. Having links on your website that don't work gives visitors the idea that your business is unprofessional. (11.6.12)
• Don’t link off of your website unless it will benefit you (a link to your blog, to Facebook, or to a place that sells your products). Once you get people to your website, keep them there. (12.5.12)
• Having a short list of links on your home page can be a great way to let customers know what your business has to offer. If you do decide to have “quicklinks” make sure your list isn’t too long – you don’t want to overwhelm your visitors. (5.10.12)
• Take opportunities to link to your products where it makes sense. Ex. On a patterns corrections page – link to a pattern you are discussing, on a quilt gallery page – link to the pattern or fabric used to make the quilt, etc. (11.7.12)
• Use images for links. For example, if you have thumbnails of products on your home page, you should have them link to the corresponding product pages. (11.8.12)

Navigation

• When designing your website, remember top navigations are best because the human eye naturally looks from left to right. (5.21.12)
• Keep your navigation clean. Don't have too many drop down pages and don't have too many drop downs from those drop downs. You don't want to overwhelm your customers. (5.22.12)

Pinterest

• Show off your business' personality with your Pinterest account. Hubspot has a board named "Fun Orange Things" because they're logo is orange. Think about what would work for your business and what would resonate with your customers. (12.7.12)
• When it comes to Pinterest - if it’s a product, pattern, fabric, etc – add your logo, business name or website address to the image to make sure your business is always connected with it. (12.6.12)
• Repin other peoples pins that are relevant to your board categories – don't solely promote your own stuff. (12.5.12)
• Encourage comments on your Pinterest pins by asking a question in the description. (12.4.12)
• When deciding if you should add a pin to Pinterest, think, "would I pin this?" (12.3.12)
• To see what people are pinning from your website, type the following in the website address field - www.pinterest.com/source/(your website here). You will omit the http://www. part - ex. www.pinterest.com/source/likesewwebsites.com
  
  If you get an error and you are sure you've typed everything correctly, it just means that people aren't pinning anything from your website yet. (11.30.12)
• When creating pins on Pinterest, add "feel free to pin this" or similar text to create a call to action. Use your judgement and don't be overbearing. It can be helpful text at times when people are wondering if something is copyrighted or if they will get in trouble by pinning it. (11.29.12)
• When creating pins for Pinterest, place words on top of the image (you can use a place such as picmonkey.com) to ensure that your images always have the descriptions you want with them, even when people change the text in the text box area. (11.28.12)
• When creating boards for Pinterest, be specific in the title of your boards. The more specific you are, the more likely people will be to follow your board. For example, people would be more interested in a board titled "Healthy Work Snacks" than in one titled "Food". (11.27.12)
• When creating descriptions for your images on Pinterest, keep your descriptions between 200 and 300 characters long for the most success in getting pins. (11.26.12)

Products

• Make sure you have good, crisp photos of your products. Because our system allows customers to enlarge product photos, you want to be sure that your photos are still in focus when they are enlarged this way. Click the "View Large Image" button on each of your product photos so you know what your customers will see. Photos can make or break a sale. (9.27.12)
  
• When setting up your online products, be sure to use our suggested products module. Suggesting products to customers who are already interested in purchasing your products is a great way to increase sales. (1.8.13)
• Want your customers to tell their friends how great your products are? If so, make sure you add Facebook "like" buttons to all of your product pages. Integrating your website with Facebook and other social media sites is a great way to increase your business. (2.22.13)
• Make sure you include a page on your website that talks about your shipping and return policies. Putting them on the left hand or right hand side of your products page works well because customers don’t have to leave your online store to learn about your policies. (2.18.13)
• Because of the way our system is built, categorizing your products by manufacturer (if it is well known) is a good way to help your website and products get found by search engines, thus increasing your sales. (1.10.13)
  
• Make sure each of your product categories has a great image that will make visitors want to click and see more. (2.20.13)
• When you set up your online store, consider creating a category for clearance or sales items and a category for new items. People will often look for these types of categories when they are shopping online. (1.10.13)
• It is really important to direct people to your online store from your home page. For example, have either a “shop now” or an “online store” button and/or featured products in a high spot on your home page (so they do not have to scroll down). Doing these things will tell your customers what they should do once they get to your website. (2.19.13)
• Consider adding a custom "Add to Cart" button to your online store. Because our system allows you to upload a custom button, you can match your button to your website design. (5.3.12)
• Unless you have more than 10 product categories, consider adding dropdown pages in your navigation that go to each category. This is a good way to help visitors find the products they want. (2.21.13)
• When taking pictures of your products, try out different angles and different layouts. By trying a lot of different ideas, you'll find the one that will look best on your website. (11.2.12)
• If you have great, high resolution photos of your products, use them to capture your customers' attention with a large slideshow somewhere on your website. (11.1.12)

Shortcuts

• To bold text, highlight text then press the "ctrl" button and the letter "b". This will save you time when working on your website. (7.9.12)
• Save time when adding text to your website by using these keyboard shortcuts - "ctrl"/"apple" + "c" for copy and "ctrl"/"apple" + "v" for paste. (7.10.12)
• Although the text boxes in our CMS have no official "underline" button, you can still underline text by highlighting it and pressing the "ctrl" key with the letter "u" key. (7.11.12)
• Save yourself time when adding text to your site by using the "ctrl"/"apple" key and the letter "z" key instead of the undo button. (7.12.12)
• If you need to move content, copy and paste the source code. Click the "source" button before you copy the text and before you paste the source code. This will save all of your formatting. (7.13.12)

Slideshows

• Try out different types of slideshows. Your website’s design and the type of images you are displaying may affect the slideshow you want to use. (4.13.12)

Social Media

• When deciding which social media platform to utilize for your business, remember to go where your customers already are. (12.17.12)
• Remember the purpose of social networks – it's not all about how many fans, followers, etc, you have. It’s about how they engage with you and how loyal they are to you. (12.18.12)
• Plan out your Social Media activity (posts, tweets, pins, etc.) ahead of time so you aren’t always under pressure to be creative immediately. (12.21.13)
• When putting social media sharing (like, tweet, pin, etc) buttons on your website, choose wisely. Putting too many buttons can be overwhelming and decrease the shares you get. (12.20.12)
• Consumers interact on social media for the following reasons (study done by IBM Institute for Business Value): Discounts, Purchases, Reviews and product rankings, General information, Exclusive information, Learn about new products, Customer service, Event participation, To feel connected, Submit ideas for new products/services, To be part of a community. (8.17.12)

Tables

• When working with images in a table, make sure that images going across the table in a row all have the same height. If the images are going down the table in a single column, they need to have the same width. (5.29.12)
• When using tables on your website, it is usually best to set the border to 0 so it is not visible. This will keep things lined up, but will not let others know you've used a table. (5.30.12)
• If you have a page that lists dates for a shop hop, or for trade shows, or if you have any type of list, be sure to use a table so everything lines up. This will keep your site looking professional and trustworthy.  (5.31.12)
• To achieve the best spacing results, use a table for large bodies of text that contain subheadings. (6.1.12)

Text / Fonts

• Don't center align large bodies of text. Center alignment can work well for titles or a few lines of text, but it doesn't work well for larger bodies of text - it looks unprofessional. (2.25.13)
• Keep things consistent – use the same font throughout the website and at the very least make sure it is the same on each page. (It is ok to use a different font for headings.) (2.26.13)
• Don’t use crazy color fonts on your website unless it matches your theme. Never use yellow text or another color that is hard to read. (2.27.13)
• Don't use background highlight colors in your text. If you want something to stand out, set it apart, use bold, or make the font a little larger. (2.28.13)

Videos

• Never set a video to auto-play. When people start hearing something unexpected, they just start closing windows. Encourage them to watch videos with a neat graphic or by placing the video in a strategic place. (3.4.13)
• Consider creating how-to videos for your website. When they are well done with creative, unique content, how-to videos can draw a lot of users to your website. (3.5.13)
• If you have how-to videos on your website, include a transcription below them. Transcriptions are great for search engines and are also very helpful for those who visit your website. You may also want to include images in your transcription. (3.6.13)
• If you have an introductory or advertising video on your website, be sure it is no longer than 60 seconds (even shorter is better). If you go past a minute, you will start losing people's interest. (Note - this does not apply to how-to videos). (3.7.13)
• If you create a good amounts of videos, consider creating a YouTube channel for your company. (3.8.13)