We have two main products that result in beautiful websites: our turn-key websites and our custom websites. The process to get there is quite different, however. Let’s look at some additional factors and how they could affect which option you choose.

Size

If your site is five to seven pages, both turn-key and custom development will work well. But once you get beyond seven pages, you would be better served by a custom site.

Time

Semi-custom websites can be launched as quickly as six weeks from kick-off. This timeline includes content, design, and buildout. We do most of the work for you on turn-key sites, so if you are busy, all you will be expected to do is a content interview, review content drafts, and provide assets and access to your site.

Custom sites take much longer than turn-key sites. How much longer depends on the site’s features, the number of pages, and numerous other factors. You will receive a timeline once we schedule the content interview or content planning session. For customers who wish to be more involved in the process, the custom is the way to go.

Features

Our semi-custom sites are perfect for businesses that want to develop an online presence with a professional website. You can add features, but keep in mind that any additional features will also add to your site’s price and timeline. You may be better off going with a custom site if you want more than one or two features.

If you would like online business tools integrated with your website, complex forms, advanced search and filtering, multiple galleries, a blog, dynamic team section, events calendar, custom animation, video background support, e-commerce, and other features, a custom site is a perfect option for you. 

Design and Development

The design and development time for a turn-key site is much faster and does not include a mock-up. It will match your branding, resulting in a professional, attractive website.

Custom websites will have a mock-up phase and will be completely customized. This is one of the reasons they take much longer than our semi-custom turn-key sites.

Price, Maintenance, and Access

There are no upfront costs for a turn-key site other than for content writing. After that, you pay a monthly payment. You do not have access to make changes to your site, but you will have 15 minutes of updates each month and quarterly plugin updates.

Custom sites cost more, and you pay for them upfront. Included in this are the more extended design and development time, hosting and full access to your site.  Depending on your monthly hosting plan you may also have 15-60 minutes of free support each month and either monthly or quarterly plugin updates.

The Choice is Yours

Both turn-key and custom sites have many advantages. The best for your business will depend on which of those advantages are most important to you. Either way, you will be pleased with the results. Contact us today to get your project started.

The post Turn-Key or Custom Website: Which is Right for Your Business? appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Keep it Simple

The most important job your contact page has is to put your readers in touch with you. That’s the whole point of your website, so in a way, the contact page is the king of pages (Okay, we know that it isn’t, but it’s still essential). By keeping your contact page simple, you will let your audience quickly and easily contact you in a way they feel most comfortable.

Options, Options, Options

There are plenty of options you can offer to website users for reaching you. People often have strong feelings about these options. One person may hate forms while another loves them. Text is becoming a more popular contact method than ever, and it can be set up with an autoresponder outside of business hours. Some business owners are concerned with having an email on their website, thinking they may get a lot of spam. Thankfully, there are ways to ensuring you are being emailed by a person and not a robot.

Special Considerations to Keep in Mind

While offering options to suit most web users is ideal, you also want to consider what fits your business model and lifestyle. If you are a contractor who never checks your email more than once a day, you may want everything to go to your phone number.

Some industries are subject to specific regulations such as HIPPA laws, which affect how and when you can contact someone. Unless you are using a particular server that is secured consistent with HIPPA, providers cannot send outgoing emails. In those cases, collecting a name and phone number via a form may be the best solution, and having your phone number available for people to call your business.

Have Your Contact Information Available

You should include the addresses, phone numbers, and contact emails of your primary location and each satellite location, franchise, or alternative office. Please discuss with your web development company whether each of these locations merits its own page or not.  

Having a location map is also a good idea. If there are multiple locations, you may want to add a locator feature that allows visitors to find the location nearest to them.  

This contact page from Select Eyecare is a good example that includes multiple locations.

Keep it Consistent with the Rest of Your Site

The thoughtfulness you put into your content and design shouldn’t come to a stop when you hit the contact page. The contact page should be a natural extension of your site, naturally flowing from it, giving your readers confidence to reach out to you. It should reflect the personality and beauty they have seen up to that point. This contact page from the Animal Behavioral Clinic of New Jersey is an excellent example of that.

The Best Contact You Can Make

The best contact you can make is with Iceberg Web Design. We’re experts at helping businesses connect with customers. We have a website-based business solution for you! Contact us today. Read Our 5 Star Reviews! 

The post Creating the Perfect Contact Page For Your Website appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Red

Red is an energizing color used to convey love, power, and even aggression. With red, context is essential, as well as the amount of red that you use. Used sparingly and in the right way, red can make quite an impact.

Pink

Pink is a softened version of red, romantic and hopeful, soothing and compassionate. It doesn’t stimulate the way red does so that it can be a good alternative in the right circumstance. But it can come across as immature, lacking power, so think carefully about what message you want to get across.

Yellow

Yellow connotes joy. It is the color children use to make a smiling sun. Why is the sun smiling? It just seems happy. Like red, yellow must be used sparingly. Too much yellow can cause feelings of anxiety.

Orange

Orange is a soothing color, representing the warmth of home, food, and family. Orange is motivating. The color of dark saffron and marigolds is also the most dominant color in India. You can see how significant orange is within eastern spirituality since Buddhist monks, Sikhs, and Hindu saints all wear the color.

Blue

Blue makes us think of purity, dependability, and peace. It is universally well-liked. This is one of the reasons you see it used on prominent social media platforms. It brings a sense of trust and relationship building. The one caveat is that blue can also come across as distant and cold if you don’t balance with other elements.

Purple

Purple balances the physical energy of red with the spiritual reliability of blue. Portraying royalty, magic, and courage, it is a color that promotes creativity. If it is overused, it can cause people to become distracted by introspective thoughts.

Green

Green portrays many things, nearly all of them positive. Because nature is filled with an abundance of green shades, we think of green as life-giving, peaceful, natural, healthy, and harmonious. And of course, we associate it with money in the United States since our paper money is green. That is where the only negative can come in. If you wish to portray greed, you can use green for that, as well.

Brown

Brown is boring. There. I’ve said it. It’s a beautiful color, but it will never lift anyone up or prompt them to act. That said, it is also safe. It will never upset anyone, either. It’s just…. brown. Avoid it if you can. It won’t add to your marketing campaign at all.

Gold

Gold is a luxury color as much as gold is a luxury item. Don’t overuse it or you risk looking tacky and egotistical. It is a great accent color, though, especially when paired with another color that can convey the message you want to get across.

Learn More about Color Psychology for your Website

•         Hubspot did a button color test and found a red call to action button outperformed a green one by 21%.  That’s amazing! The only thing they changed was the color of the button.
•         Iconic Fox has created a fantastic infographic on color psychology.

How to Get Clicks

This brief overview barely skimmed the surface of how color affects our buying decisions. The good news is that you don’t have to become an expert on color psychology. Our web designers and digital marketers understand what makes consumers click. To increase your conversions, contact us today! 

The post Color Psychology and Your Website appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Business Locator

If you have more than one brick and mortar location, having a location page is an essential complement to your local SEO because it is a great way to target location-specific long-tail, location-specific keywords.  

Hirshfield’s

One great example of a store locator the one Iceberg Web Design built for Hirshfield’s.  For this page, the customer has several ways from which to choose a location.

•         If they want to allow location services, GPS will enable the list to automatically show the closest stores to their location at the top of the left sidebar. You can accomplish similar results by putting in the zip code of the area you are looking for.
•         Perhaps they have a favorite store already. In the lower-left is an alphabetized list of links to all Hirshfield’s stores.  
•         You can also look at the interactive map. The map links to store hours and other information a customer may want to have.

For a business locator as in-depth as this, it is important to ensure that all locations have a unique page for that specific store only. The address and GPS location allow location services to find the store that the customer is looking for quickly.

Stonegate Builders

Thinking outside of the box can lead to new ways of using old tools. For Stonegate Builders, a Division of Gonya Homes, we built a location page to help potential homebuyers find where they had available homes for sale. The way theirs works is through a map that shows the various neighborhoods with Stonegate Builders homes for sale. When you click on the link, it takes you to a page where you can learn about the community, the houses in it, and how to get more information.

Stonegate Builder’s location page is different from Hirshfield’s because each of their customers has their own unique buying habits. In the end, it comes down to what the customer is going to respond to best.

Select Eyecare

Select Eyecare is an eye care clinic with an in-house lab and three locations in the northern Twin Cities metro area. Iceberg Web Design created a location page for Select Eyecare that had their locations on a single page as part of the company website. We chose to have their location page laid out this way because it best suits their needs and customers’ needs.

Avoiding Doorways in Your Location Pages

It’s essential to make your location page unique and useful for users, and if possible, have one location for each of your physical stores. That’s because of something known as “doorway pages.” This black hat SEO tactic can become a trap that is easy for you and your customers to fall into. To learn more about doorway pages, read this article by Google Search Central. Follow Google’s recommendations, and have a separate Google My Business page for each location.

To avoid any pitfalls and reap the rewards of a business locator page, it is best to use an experienced website developer like Iceberg Web Design. We would be happy to meet with you and discuss your next project. Contact us today!

The post Business Locator Page for Your Website appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Each month we have been featuring each of our team members in a profile post, so you can get to know the penguins better. This month, we are talking to Kyle Teeter. Kyle has been a Website Developer at Iceberg Web Design for the past three years.

Kyle | Website Developer Penguin

Have your duties changed since you first started working here?

I originally started as a CSR while I finished up my education in Software Engineering. Once I finished up the education, Iceberg needed a Website Developer and offered me a new position as a website developer.

What do you do for Iceberg’s customers?

As a Website Developer, I help customers maintain and update their websites and work with new clients to build marketing, e-commerce, and custom websites.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

I love being able to work with clients to solve problems. Web development goes far beyond just what the public sees, and I really enjoy the process of discovering how a website can help streamline things within the client’s business.

What is your #1 goal when working with a customer?

My number one goal is to listen to their needs and ideas. They are all experts in their fields, and we learn so much from them every day.

In what other industries have you worked?

I have worked in many other industries over the years, ranging from commercial fishing to education. 

Tell us a bit about your family (including pets):

My wife and I just moved back to Minnesota about two years ago. We have really enjoyed connecting with the community and exploring the area. We have two mischievous cats that are using finding ways to ambush each other when they are not sleeping.

Do you have any hobbies/special interests?

Recently, I have been learning a few new sports like rollerblading and cross-country skiing. Also, I have a lot of fun trying to make new recipes, often inspired by international tv shows.

What is something about you that might surprise your customers and co-workers?

You might be surprised to know that I have a side business in the education industry. It has been challenging, but everything I have learned in the process makes it easier for me to connect with other business owners.

Describe your perfect day.

While I do love my work, I would have to say that a perfect day for me would be spent with my family doing the things that we love to do.

Science or History? Which is your favorite and why?

That is a hard one. I enjoy both, but I would have to go with science. The process of asking questions, creating a hypothesis, etc., is really enjoyable for me. I am quite curious and pretty easily fascinated by things.  

If you were guaranteed the correct answer to one question, what would you ask?

What untruths do I currently believe?

What is your best piece of advice? It can be about anything.

“Listen to advice and accept discipline; then you, too, will become wise. People might make many plans, but what the Lord says is what will happen.” – Proverbs 19:20-21

Meet All the Penguins!

Kyle and the rest of the penguins at Iceberg Web Design look forward to helping you solve your business problems. Contact us to meet all the penguins as we create your next website!

The post Penguin Profile: Kyle Teeter | Iceberg Web Design appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

In general, we recommend a total website makeover every two to three years to keep up with current design and development trends. Security is another reason for revamping your website every few years. But there are other indicators that it’s time for a new online look.

You’ve made changes to your core values or processes

Has your business received an internal makeover in the last year, but your branding hasn’t received an external one? Maybe you’ve hired new employees or had significant employee turnover. Perhaps you’ve increased your product offering or niched down to serve a more specific audience. Your website should reflect your business – values, services, staff, and processes. Businesses are ever-changing entities, and as yours grows and changes, so should your website.

You’ve Decided to Add Integrations to Your Site

Websites are no longer just for bringing in clients. They are business tools that you can use to hire people, portals for members, renters, or employees, payment centers, and more! If you can imagine it, it most likely can be done.

You’ve started investing in SEO or online ads

If you’re focusing on bringing traffic to your website, you want to make the best possible first impression on your new website visitors. Your website should be up to date and have a straightforward design that lets your website traffic know what they should do. Powerful calls to action on every page will help convert traffic into customers.

Your Site Doesn’t Have a Mobile-Friendly Design

Half of all website traffic comes from mobile users, yet not all websites are mobile-friendly.[1] When encountering a website that is difficult to view on smartphones or tablets, mobile users often become frustrated and leave for another site.

<side by side images of mobile-friendly vs. non-mobile design>

Your Page Loads Slower Than 3 Seconds

Google ranks websites primarily for customer experience. Page speed is an essential factor in a website user’s experience. People are impatient and will click back on a slow site.

•         The ideal website load time for mobile sites is 1-2 seconds.
•         53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.
•         A 2-second delay in load time resulted in abandonment rates of up to 87%.

How fast is your website? You can find out by using Google’s Page Speed Insights. Just put the page URL into the search bar at the top of the page, and within a minute, you will know whether it is fast (green), slow (red), or somewhere in the middle (yellow).

You Wrote Your Website Content

Most business owners write too technically because they know their business’s ins and outs and want to share it all. Professional content writers write from a sales standpoint. We know how to attract site viewers and convert them into customers. We also know how to increase your ranking on a Google search engine results page. This will make your site easier to find when someone searches for a business like yours online.

Nobody is Filling Out Your Website Contact Forms

If people visit your page, but they aren’t filling out your contact form, it is a good indication that you need a layout upgrade, content with the right calls to action, and maybe even a giveaway or lead magnet.

Your top competitor just redesigned their website

If you are going to compete, you have to play on the same field. We always look at what the competition is doing when we redesign a website.

Are you ready for your new website? Contact us today!

[1] Clement, J. “Mobile Percentage of Website Traffic 2020.” Statista, 19 Nov. 2020, www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices/.

The post How Do You Know It’s Time for a New Website? appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Features are notable additions to a website that make it unique and useful to your visitors and your company. These features are also more challenging to design, so often, they add an extra charge to your bill. The good news is, they are usually well worth it!

In this article, we will look at 3 of the most basic features or add-ons to your site:

•         Transfer of a WordPress Blog
•         Custom Post Type
•         Photo Galleries

Transfer of a WordPress Blog.

Often when clients come to us, they have an old site with many blog posts. All of these URLs are valuable for SEO. If we pull them off the web, any backlinks or bookmarks people may have saved will end up leading to a 404-error page, telling the user that the page can’t be found. This is an easy way to lose a potential customer, and your site’s SEO will take a significant hit.

To prevent this, we always recommend transferring your WordPress blog to your new site. Anything you don’t want to move over, we will redirect you to your new home page during the site’s development.

Custom Post Type

WordPress is an extensive content management system (CMS). WordPress content is arranged by post types and by default by:

•         Post
•         Page

Anytime you have content that isn’t a post or a page, you can create a custom post type. Perhaps you are selling something. The most popular custom post type is Woo Commerce products. A product page would be a custom post type.

Other examples would be:

•         Book Reviews
•         Movies (for a movie theater)
•         Services

Anything. The main thing about a custom post type is that it will have customized fields to input data. Let’s look at the example of movies. You might have fields for:

•         Movie Title
•         Synopsis
•         Starring
•         Rating
•         Showtimes
•         A ticket buy button

This will create consistency in the appearance of the movie pages. Also, the movies will all be organized together on the backend of the site, making them easy to find.

Photo Galleries

Photo galleries are a great way to show off your services. If you own a construction or remodeling company, you can display pictures of the homes or businesses you have built or remodeled. If you are a Salon owner, you can show examples of your work, such as adding hairstyles, highlights, haircuts, etc.

We can use plugins to display your photos beautifully. Some plugins will integrate your photos with social media, such as Pinterest or Instagram.

Creating a website can be a complicated process. Our team of WordPress Experts does it every day, so you don’t have to. If you want a new website for your business, contact us today!

The post WordPress Features Including Blog Transfers, Custom Post Types, & Photo Galleries appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

•         Improve Security
•         Fix Bugs
•         Adding Features and Functionality

Improve Security

The best way to improve your WordPress site’s security is to update your WordPress themes and plugins. While you are at it, remove any plugins that you don’t use to minimize the risk of a hacker exploiting them. There has an uptick in attacks on WordPress sites lately, so it’s a good idea to make it as challenging as possible for hackers to get into yours.

One Customer’s Story of Getting Hacked

We recently worked with a customer whose site got hacked. Thankfully, we found the issue the day it happened and removed all the malicious code. We then had to restore the site, update all security keys and reset all the account passwords, which was time-consuming and expensive for the customer. The plugins were all out of date, the WordPress core was two full versions behind current, so while it is impossible to know precisely how the breach happened, the most likely culprit was the WordPress core being so out of date.

Fix Bugs

Updating WordPress plugins and themes also fixes bugs and general conflicts between plugins. While some people become annoyed when they see it is time to update, again, they should feel good about the fact that the developer of the plugin or theme is doing their due diligence to release an update when they have found something that can adversely affect your website either now or in the future.

One Customer’s Story of a Buggy Plugin

A recent story Recently, a customer’s form stopped working because the ReCaptcha wouldn’t validate. The issue turned out to be a conflict with the Autoptimize plugin – which is used to make your site faster by optimizing CSS, JS, Images, Google fonts, and more. – Seems unrelated, right? But updating the plugin solved the ReCaptcha issue.

Adding Features and Functionality

Updating your WordPress Plugins isn’t just about security and squashing bugs. It’s also done to ensure you have the most up-to-date features and functionality available for your website. Developers work hard to create plugins. So reputable developers will release updates when they learn that there is an issue with the plugin they need to fix or improve. Sometimes they even make special requests.

WP Docs

We had used WP Docs on websites to organize forms for customers in the past and liked how it worked. It did lack one thing, however. It didn’t let you sort the documents by date. This was a feature that one of our customers wanted for their website, so our developer contacted the plugin author to see if they could help. They agreed it was a great idea and said they would include it with the next update. Sure enough, when version 1.7.3 was released, sorting the documents by date was part of the premium features.

Updating Your Plugins Is Easy

Why Should You Keep Your WordPress Plugins Updated? Because it can be made super easy! Iceberg Web Design customers can purchase quarterly or monthly maintenance packages and get all their plugins updated and their forms tested regularly by our website professionals. Contact us today to learn more!

The post Why You Should Keep WordPress Plugins Updated appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

When you work with Iceberg Web Design, you will meet their entire team of web marketing professionals. Each of us on the team has a unique role in making sure that your website becomes a powerful tool for your business. But who are these penguins who are helping you connect with your customers? Recently, we’ve been profiling our team of penguins.

Over the past couple of months, we’ve been introducing you to some of the Penguins at Team Iceberg. Next up to bat is..

LENNY!  Just kidding it’s his dad, Shane Bader, Vice President of Sales and Marketing! 

Shane | VP of Sales & Marketing

How long have you been working for Iceberg?

Nearly five years

Have your duties changed since you first started working here? 

Yes. I started in sales and have since taken on the role of heading up the marketing department.

What do you do for Iceberg’s customers? 

I consult with our customers on their website and digital marketing goals.  From there, I provide a solution that will attain these goals. 

What’s your favorite part of your job? 

Building long-lasting relationships with both our customers and our team members. 

What is your number one goal when working with a customer? 

To see them succeed. After working with Iceberg for almost five years, I hear quite a bit about [our clients’] successes. While working together on a project, we get to know their business well.  Then we see the direct results of them achieving their goals like:  A home builder we work with built 50 homes beyond what they predicted they would; An irrigation company that we started working with four years ago now has a staff and full-time work. A roofing company we work with more than doubled their traffic and leads from last year. It’s great to see clients succeed.

In what other industries have you worked? 

I have worked as an insurance agent, bartender, and sales director.

Tell us a bit about your family (including pets). 

My wife’s name is Britta, and we have a daughter named Adilyn, who is nearly two. We also have a four-year-old dog named Lenny. We adopted him from a rescue organization called  Secondhand Hounds.

Lenny is pictured at the top!

Do you have any hobbies or special interests? 

I like to hike, fish, and enjoy the outdoors. I also play music. I have turntables and mix records for house and techno.

What is something about you that might surprise your customers and co-workers?

I’m on a Kickball Team called the Cannibalz.

Describe your perfect day.

A day in a fishing boat with friends and family on a Minnesota lake.

Science or History? Which is your favorite and why? 

History, I like to learn how things happened. I love music documentaries and biographies.

If you were guaranteed the correct answer to one question, what would you ask?

What is the missing link in human evolution?

What is your best piece of advice? It can be about anything.

Stay positive through life’s challenges. 

Find out more!

Connect with Shane on LinkedIn.  For all of your online marketing needs, you can contact us at Iceberg Web Design.

 Contact Iceberg Web Design today to see what we can do for your business today! 

Read Our Reviews

The post Shane Bader | VP of Sales and Marketing | Iceberg Web Design Inc. appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Today we are profiling our Support Penguin: Jessie Gutzwiller. Jessie is our customer service representative. She handles Support and Maintenance, keeping websites running smoothly long after they are built.

Jessie | CSR Penguin

How long have you worked for Iceberg?

 1.5 years 

Have your duties changed since you first started working here?

Yes, I started as a customer service rep, and now I am doing more developer duties such as website edits, changes, updating plugins for maintenance customers, posting blogs, adding pages.

What do you do for Iceberg’s customers? 

Answer calls and emails to address questions, problems, payments, updates, changes. Try to resolve any issues as quickly and efficiently as possible. 

What is your favorite part of your job?

I enjoy talking with customers, especially when I can quickly solve an issue or a question and make their day better. 

What is your #1 goal when working with a customer?

My goal is to help a customer with their inquiry or issue, quickly. 

 In what other industries have you worked?

Mainly administrative or customer service in Mental health, physical therapy, industrial, commercial, retail, medical, and now digital. 

Tell us a bit about your family, including pets:

We live just north of the Anoka area and have been here for seven years. We have two pets, Charlie is a yellow Labrador retriever and a goofball, and Ted is our cat, who is an orange, fluffy pile of mellow LOVE! 

Do you have any hobbies or interests?

Yes, I have been making jewelry in my spare time for about 12 years, and I absolutely love to plant flowers in the Spring. Although winter is not my favorite season, Christmas is my favorite holiday, and I decorate my entire house inside and out! 

What is something that may surprise your customers or co-workers? 

I love miniatures of most anything, and I have a small collection of tiny hats! 

Describe your perfect day:

Going to the nursery on a beautiful spring day and filling my car and trunk with flowers, and spending the day outside planting. 

Science or History? 

Well, in school I did better in History, so I guess…History. 

What is your best piece of advice?

Have Faith! 

Need Web Design or Development, Digital Marketing Solutions?

If you have any digital marketing or website needs, Iceberg Web Design has a solution for you. Jessie offers the best customer service!

Contact Iceberg Web Design today to see what we can do for your business today! 

Read Our Reviews

The post Jessie Gutzwiller Customer Support | Iceberg Web Design appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.