It doesn’t seem that long ago that watching a video online was a painful experience. Often it wouldn’t work at all, and when it did the picture was tiny and distorted.

Now, thanks to new technology and fast broadband, online video use has exploded. And with popular websites like YouTube, videos get shared amongst social networks and become viral, creating a buzz.

The future trend is for much more video on websites, including small business websites. You can use video to tell your story, make a sales pitch, and create a buzz around your product or service.

With the upcoming rollout of a national broadband network, internet television, or IPTV as it is known, will start to replace regular TV. Unlimited online channels, including many in high definition, will be the new standard.

Get ready for the new frontier of online video!

Here’s what happens when I Google “Arrowsmith Websites Maleny”:

Google provides a map and details about my business! That’s great, thanks Google!

When you do a location specific search on Google, often you’ll get a map and business details. This handy feature is even more useful when you are using a mobile phone to search for a business or service in an area you’re not familiar with.

Google your business and location and make sure your business is listed in this way. If not, you can add it using the Local Business Centre.

If your business is already listed, Google may have found your details on your website or a directory website and listed them for you. If so, you can correct the listing and add more information, even photos.

With Google becoming the main way people look for products and services, this is a simple and free thing you can do to help potential customers find your business.

So you’re putting together the content for your website, and you’re wondering where to start. If you’re a small business, you’ll want to keep it as simple and to the point as possible, to make your website easy for people to use.

There are website conventions that have become accepted to the point that people expect certain items to be there and in the right place.

You should always have a ‘Home’ button somewhere near the top left, and you can guarantee if you don’t that people will say ‘where is the home button’.

You should always have a ‘Contact’ button linking to a page with all your contact details, it’s one of the things people look for, and most people in business want to make it easy for potential customers to contact them!

Another standard feature to include is the ‘About’ page. This is your opportunity to share your history and qualifications with visitors to your website, allowing you to build rapport and become less anonymous.

What you put in between the Home, About and Contact pages is the stuff that makes you different; it’s the products and services you offer.

This formula will make it easier for people to use your website, and if you’re in business, that’s good news.

Introducing Fig Creative Brands, a Maleny based marketing, branding and website business with a national and international target market.

Fig is a joint business venture of Jennifer Perri, Adrian Anderson and Nathan Arrowsmith, who have overlapping expertise in website development and business marketing, and all have been successful in business as individuals.

As a collective, Fig synergises the specialities of the individuals into a premium branding and marketing agency, with a focus on results – your results.

In addition to the three principals, Fig incorporates a network of specialist contractors, talented local professionals who round out our offering of professional services.

Our goal is ‘Growing Your Business’, and our success will be measured by your success. Check out www.figcreativebrands.com for more information, and feel free to say hello.

Your domain name is your home on the internet. It’s your online brand, it’s on your business cards, and it’s in your email address. You’ll be using it a lot, so it makes good sense to get the best one you can.

So what makes a good domain name? Starting with the suffix, a .com domain name is essential for a commercial business. Leave the .net and .org for networks and organisations.

If you’re doing business in Australia then a .com.au will be good to have also. You can put your website on either the .com or the .com.au, and redirect the other one, so both names will lead to your website.

www.example.com

www.example.com.au

Then comes the main part after the ‘www’s. If you can register an exact match of your business name, then that’s the way to go. If not, then you can be creative and use relevant descriptive or locality keywords. If you sell widgets, then www.examplewidgets.com could be an option. If your market is based in Maleny, then www.examplewidgetsmaleny.com would be a good choice.

Domain names can include a dash (-), however be wary of getting one in your domain name, as you will forever be reminding people to put the dash in, and if they forget then they may end up at another website instead of yours.

www.example-widgets.com

Keep it as short as possible, if your domain name is too long, there is more chance of forgetting or misspellings.

www.examplehasthebestwidgetsinmaleny.com

You can research available domain names on the Arrowsmith Websites Domains page.

There are more than 3 billion mobile phone users in the world, around 50% of the global population. This is forecast to grow to 70% by the end of 2010.

What’s that got to do with websites? The latest phones are mini computers that connect to the internet, so you can visit websites from anywhere. People use the internet to search for everything these days, and local search is the next trend, partly due to the mobility of the searchers.

Online applications such as maps and satellite navigation will retrieve data from your website and include it in search results. So if you’re in a new town a search on your phone for nearby restaurants, you not only get a list of restaurants, but locations, opening times and website links.

Trends such as this make it an imperative for most businesses to have a search engine friendly website.