THE WOODLANDS, Texas (February 8, 2010) – In response to the growing demand for affordable, professional websites; GoLocal247.com, the Internet division of The User Friendly Phone Book, has expanded their line of Internet products with the launch of goWebDesign247.com in order to provide customized websites based on proven template designs.

There are companies offering templates and there are other companies offering custom design; goWebDesign247 has created a process that uses the best aspects of both approaches. Templates, based on proven web design structures and strategies, can be adapted and customized specifically for the information and design needs of the client.

“This allows us to simplify the entire process for our clients and create websites in weeks that otherwise would take months of meetings and thousands of dollars to develop from scratch,” said Mary Beth Brendza, Vice President of The User Friendly Phone Book, the parent company of goWebDesign247.

Many businesses have known that they need a website for years, but they’ve never had the time or knowledge to get everything together or, possibly, they have been burned in the past by trusting friends and companies that failed to deliver on their promises and are stuck with broken websites that cannot be updated. GoWebDesign247 makes it easy by beginning with proven design templates and building on them to meet their client’s specific requirements.

When a customer’s Internet needs grow beyond a 3 or 5 page website, the team of experts that GoWebDesign247 has assembled are additionally able to provide their experience to manage and develop flash, ecommerce, Joomla, Wordpress, and JavaScript solutions.

The User-Friendly Phone Book (UFPB), LLC, is a leading independent publisher of yellow page directories across the United States. The GoLocal247 network is one of the fastest growing community-focused website companies in the country with Web sites in parts of California, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas.

For further information contact goWebSites247 at www.gowebdesign247.com

I was recently updating Middletown Air’s profile and it got me thinking about web copy. Of all of the annoyances involved in setting up customer profiles and web sites, “coming up with good copy” has to be at the top of the list. In thinking about sites and profiles that have good copy vs. sites and profiles that have poor copy, here are a few points that you can keep in front of you to try and streamline the process. I’m sure that none of these items are earth shattering, but it is important to stay reminded of them in order to maximize the time that you have with clients and to minimize the time spent writing copy.

• Know who the customers are. The better you can define whom you are reaching, the easier it will be to judge if your content will be effective.
• Highlight what makes this company stand out against the competitors. The Internet is designed for comparison shopping. If you assume that the customer is reading several sites or profiles at the same time, you will realize what needs to be said in order to stand out.
• Focus on benefits. There are features and there are benefits. If you can drive home the benefits of using a company’s product or services, it will make an emotional connection that the reader will remember.
• Get to the point early. Don’t save your good content for the bottom of the page.
• Write in an informal or personal style. The Internet is a personal medium; try to avoid being too formal and stuffy.
• Keep your sentences simple. People scan online content; they don’t read it word for word. If you keep the style simple, readers will get the content quickly.
• Think of the keywords that users will search to access the content. Google and other search engines determine the keywords that they attach to a site by the content that they find there. If you want your customer to be found under “pool supplies” then you need to make sure that the headlines and content mention “pool supplies.”
• Consolidate and simplify.

Recently I’ve been asked several questions about choosing a great URL for clients. Sometimes it seems like all of the great URLs are already taken and there is no hope of finding an available good one outside of making it so long that users will risk carpal tunnel syndrome when typing the email address. Sure, it describes your business, and it is available but “twentyfourhourplumbingandairconditioninginoklahomacity.com” is probably not your best choice. Here are some recent questions and my thoughts.

From RioGrandeValley247.com

“When is it alright to use hyphens or underscores in a URL?”

Generally speaking, a professional URL should not have hyphens or underscores. It becomes difficult to remember and users will mistype email addresses and web names. If, however there is no other solution, a hyphen is much better than an underscore for a few reasons:

• People will assume a hyphen and even mistake an underscore for a hyphen.
• Many browsers make it difficult to see the underscore and users might assume it is a space.
• “Hyphen” is easier to say when you are telling someone the URL out loud.

A hyphen might actually be a good idea in a URL when the name of the company or the words in the URL might be reformed to create an unexpected word. A.C. Heating might not want the URL “acheating.com” even if it is available since your eye naturally goes to the word “cheating” and it will read “a cheating.” Not the kind of idea you want to place in the mind of potential customers. In this case “ac-heating.com” might be a better choice.
From OklahomaCity247.com

“Every URL for my customer is taken”

If your customer is in a market that has many web sites or if they have a very generic name, it might be difficult to find a URL that they can market. Let’s say that your client is “Great Plumbing.” Every way that you can spell those words is taken. Here are some ideas to still find a great URL.

1. Use the city or geography abreviation in the title. A quick survey on goDaddy reveals that Greatplumbingokc, 24hourplumbingokc and bestplumberokc are all available.
2. Use a URL that accentuates their key marketing terms. InAHurryOKC or FixItRightOKC are both available and would look good.

Brent Young
goWebDesign247