‘I have a business and I need a STUNNING website.’

If we had a pound for every time we heard this, we could afford to pay Bill Gates to clean our office for the next fifteen years. But there are countless beautiful websites out there with all the pretty pictures and cool features that overlook the REALLY important stuff that turns the casual web surfer into a returning customer.

The design gurus at Eazysites Ltd. are in the industry of creating bigger and stronger brands in the digital space. Our approach is both artistic as well as functional, with our work achieving huge results for clients of all sizes.

We use:

So CONTACT US NOW or CALL +44 (0) 781 427 8721 to get your business ready online for a new 2012.

Eazysites is expanding and looking for A – players to join us in creating and marketing totally awesome content for our clients. We’re looking for new team members to join us at our Leicester and London studios. If your passionate about style, functionality, want to make a ‘dent’ in the digital space and think your geek enough, then send us an email. The positions were looking for are:

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES – May lead to permanent positions (Leicester and London)

WHAT IS IT?

It’s never been a better time to be involved in digital media! With a growing market and customer base, Eazysites is looking for individuals that are good at making first impressions, understanding client needs and offering solutions to the way businesses do business online. As Account Executives, your role is in finding clients that need beautiful and functional web design, SEO, CMS, eCommerce, graphic or print solutions. You will need to be organised and be able to think ‘differently’ to attract clients. You’ve got to be happy to face clients on a daily basis, so your enthusiasm must be boundless.

BENEFITS?

Shot on a Nikon D3100, Edited using Final Cut Pro X, let us know what you think of the final product! Want video editing for your business or service? Click HERE.

Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that OS X Lion is available to download on the Mac App Store. Our resident geek and creative director EMKWAN has been covering Lion for a while now and we think it’s awesome, but if you’re the type to want reviews before diving in yourself, here’s a handful of the best out there:

Jim Darymple @ Loop Insight Four Word Review:

“Get it, Lion rules!”

Cody Fink of MacStories:

Lion is an evolution of OS X that’s instantly familiar to anyone coming from a previous version. It’s also well designed to be easy to learn for someone who’s never picked up a Mac before. 

Leander Kahney & John Brownlee of Cult of Mac:

OS X Lion could very well be the last version of OS X as we know it… It’s fitting, then, that OS X Lion is not only the best version of OS X yet, but the first great PC operating system for the post-PC age….Buy it. OS X Lion is the future of PC operating systems in the Post-PC Age.

Stephen Hacket of MacGasm:

Lion is a solid update that brings a lot of new ideas to the desktop from the mobile space. Clearly, Apple is trying to make the Mac more attractive to its legions of iOS customers. … OS X is still OS X. And Lion is the best version yet. 

John Siracusa of Ars Technicas exhaustive review:

…better technology has simply reduced the number of things that we need to care about. Lion is better technology. It marks the point where Mac OS X releases stop being defined by what’s been added. From now on, Mac OS X should be judged by what’s been removed. 

MG Siegler of TechCrunch seems to be kissing OS X goodbye:

…one can’t help but feel that OS X Lion could be the last of its breed in the OS X family. OS X Lion still feels like OS X, but I’m not sure the Mac OS that comes next will… If that’s the case, OS X Lion is a great send-off for what has been a fantastic OS.

There are plenty of welcome additions here, including aesthetic tweaks and attention to mounting privacy concerns. Like Snow Leopard before it, however, Lion is hardly an explosive upgrade. And like Snow Leopard, it comes in at a reasonable £20.95, making it a worthy upgrade for current Mac owners. But does a boatload of evolutionary features add up to a revolutionary upgrade? Let’s find out. Below you’ll find some of the best reviews and videos on the ‘LION’ we found from the interwebs.

By Bianca Male

The Web is full of horrendous sites, and we’re not just talking about bad design. There are many other elements besides how your website looks that go into making it customer-friendly — not to mention something that inspires them to actually do business with you.

From thorough contact information to customer testimonials, here are the essentials that every small business website should have for it to effectively help you do business.

1. A clear description of who you are

Someone who stumbles upon your website shouldn’t have to do investigative work to figure out what, exactly, it is that you do. That means clearly stating your name and summing up your products or services right on the homepage, says John Zhuang, of Web-design and SEO-optimization firm Winning Interactive.

“Tell people this is the right website that they have been searching for,” he says. “[A clear description] will attract the visitor’s attention immediately within 2-3 seconds, and encourage them to stay on your website longer.”

2. A simple, sensible Web address

Don’t make things complicated.

“Your domain name is like your brand. It should be easy for a user to type it into a Web browser or an e-mail address,” says Ron Wright, the founder of business Web design and online marketing firm Accentix.

He adds: “I always recommend the .com domain as users are conditioned to type that extension when they enter a Web address. For non-profits or organizations, I usually recommend using a .org domain for branding purposes, but also recommend having a .com version of the domain in case a user accidentally types the .com address.”

Wright also suggests avoiding dashes (which can cause SEO headaches) and numbers (which can cause confusion for customers).

3. An easily-navigated site map

Clear links to the most important pages, and a site map, are crucial for guiding visitors to the information they’re looking for.

“Be sure your navigation is clearly laid out. I always recommend using dropdowns in the navigation menu so the visitor can see the content under every heading from virtually any page. You want to make it very easy for your visitors to find what they are looking for, or what you want them to know,” Wright suggests.

4. Easy-to-find contact information

You wouldn’t want to lose a customer to a competitor just because you made it difficult for them to get in touch with you.

“Not every online visitor has the patience to click through every page on your website to find the contact information,” says Zhuang.

“The best place for the contact information is the top left or top right corner of the home page,” he recommends. “It is also a good practice to include contact information in every page of the website in the footer or side bar or even in top right corner, which helps the visitors to find it more easily.”

You should also be sure to include several ways for them to contact you — phone, e-mail, and a standard contact form, are all good options. Forbes also suggests including your address, and even a link to your location in Google maps.

“One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is to force only one way to reach them,” says Wright. “The point is to make it very easy for users to communicate with you on their terms.”

5. Customer testimonials

Honest words from others help make your products or services more tangible to customers who are visiting you online.

“They help your potential customers to build trust in you, especially if you are new,” Zhuang says. “[And they] help shoppers to confirm whether the product [or] services meet their needs.”

“People love to hear stories from real people,” he adds. “They help people [find out] other things you haven’t said [on] your website.”

6. An obvious call to action

“Tell the online visitors literally what you want them to do with clear tones of commend,” says Zhuang. “For instance, you may want them to call you now for free quote, or sign up to your exclusively online coupons, or add products to the online shopping cart, etc.”

And, he adds, call attention to your suggestion — by using special buttons or highlighting the text, for example.

7. Know the basics of SEO

Your website won’t do you as much good if no one can stumble upon it. Become familiar with the SEO basics to make it more accessible by search engine.

“You don’t need to employ mysterious, ninja, black hat SEO types to rank well on the search engines. Simply make sure your website is coded correctly,” Wright says.

That means using the correct keywords throughout your text, putting in plenty of links, naming your page titles and URLs correctly, and employing the magic of images and videos.

8. Fresh, quality content

For many businesses, your website is your first impression on a customer. You want to give them what they’re looking for, and perhaps even give them a reason to keep coming back.

Wright says, “The user is looking for something. Make sure you give it to them…. [and be] sure your content is original, well written and valuable.”

Fresh content is a goldmine for SEO, as well. You can keep your content from getting stale (and give your company some personality, too) by incorporating a regularly-updated blog or connecting in your social media feeds.

9. A secure hosting platform

Having your online information hijacked is a nightmare, and, should it happen to your business, it could cost you customers.

“It is imperative that you have a secure, trustworthy hosting company to keep the bad guys out and your content up and running,” says Wright. “It is also very important to keep your content management system updated in order to stay one step ahead of the hackers.”

10. A design and style that’s friendly to online readers

As Forbes puts it, “Web surfers have the attention spans of drunken gnats.”

Zhuang describes it in more detail: “Online visitors often scan through a Web page to sample the content first when they open a new Web page. If they feel like they are on the right page, they will slow down to read the full story. To enhance user’s experience on your small business website, you need to organize the content for scanning.”

He recommends three style points for online writing to keep in mind:

Break things down into short paragraphs, with headers if necessary
Use bullet points
Highlight important words or phrases.
Wright adds, “In the end, simplicity and basic colors are the best bet. Again, the content is the focus, not dancing clowns at the top of the page.”

www.entrepreneur.com

Mashable

The web is still talking about Google+, the search giant’s new social initiative and answer to Facebook. Now that it has been out in the wild for a few days, people have had some time to assess Google’s social network, especially where it hits a home run and where it strikes out.

We’ve already written a review about Google+, but we were curious about what early Google+ users thought about it. So we decided to ask a circle on Google+ about what they believe is good and bad about Google+. And they delivered: we got more than 100 responses about the pros and cons of Google’s new social layer.

SEE ALSO: REVIEW | PHOTOS | VIDEOS | POLL: What do you think of Google+?

Let’s be clear: Google+ is in its infancy, and many of the things they mentioned are part of future releases or bugs that Google intends to fix. Still, the conversation we’ll provide a look into where Google’s social networking is succeeding and where it comes up short against its competitors.

Here are some of the pros and cons of Google+, according to its users:

Pro: Gorgeous UI

Many Google+ users commented on the sleekness of its user interface. It’s clean, it’s easy-to-use and its not cluttered. A big reason for this is Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original designers of the Apple Macintosh GUI. Google gave him free reign in designing the Google+ UI.

Here is what some Google+ said about the UI:

“The UI is definitely top notch. It seems Google has finally gotten it right. The selective sharing seems to work much more intuitively.” ~ Cheryl Allin

“This is a shiny awesome toy with a kickass UI and amazing bonus features like Sparks and Huddle.” ~Cassius Wright

“Excellent UI that is simply but powerful.” ~ Will Hucks

“I love it for its clean UI and how it seamlessly integrates into rest of Google. Finding stream notification from gmail is really cool.” ~ Sudha Jamthe

“It’s extremely clean and devoid of advertising or spam, something that has been slowly creeping into Facebook making it more of a cluttered mess.” ~ Aaron Clark

Our Take: The UI is better than most Google products. It’s not only clean and easy to understand, but it has character and flavor (you’ll notice it when adding or removing people from circles). Their bet on Hertzfeld paid off.

Con: Noise in the Stream

Google+ is designed to minimize noise in the stream through the use of circles, but it’s still too noisy for most users. The big issue is that posts are pushed to the top whenever there’s a new comment, something that most users think is unnecessary. There are also still issues with collapsing posts with long comment threads.

Here are some users’ thoughts on the noise level in Google+:

“Feed shows recently updated regardless of original post time rather than posts in a chronological order.” ~Steven Crader

“Timeline needs to be customizable especially when following high-profile people.” ~ Spencer Scott

“There should be choices on how to view a stream feed. > (1) newest post, (2) newest comment, (3) censored by google+ (oops, I mean relevance)” ~ Phil Staudt

“I don’t like that I don’t have the option to choose whether I want my feed to come up as items jumping to the top when there’s a new comment or when something new is just added to my feed. I don’t think I’ll be reading every single comment people leave.” ~ Kelly Ryder

“Posts aren’t in chronological order. I keep seeing the same things I’ve seen since yesterday because they have a lot of +1?s and new content is occasionally interspersed throughout the stream.” ~ Zac Witte

“Noisy threads like this one that keep popping to the top of my stream!” ~ Hillel Fuld

Our Take: Google+ needs to stop bumping posts to the top of the stream anytime there’s a comment, and this change needs to be implemented as soon as possible. There needs to be a way to see “top stories” from your stream. Yes, it’s a Facebook feature, but it’s a really good Facebook feature.

Pro: Circles Is Slick

User reaction to Circles, Google+’s friend list feature, has been very positive overall. Users have commented that it’s the easiest system on the market for putting friends into groups, making it easier to share posts with just your business colleagues or your family.

Here are some of their thoughts on Google Circles:

“Selective content pushing and intake with groups is awesome.” ~ Kayvan Farzeneh

“Circles are huge. They solve the reason I don’t use Facebook.” ~ Chris Heald

“I love that Circles makes it so much less creepy for me to befriend random people online.” ~ Jonathan Davis

“The ability to quickly and easily group people (across multiple circles) means that the communications you have with others will be more relevant when choosing to share a message with a specific circle. I imagine this will be extremely helpful in minimizing the noise.” ~ Jodi Echakowitz

Our Take: Google+ Circles is well designed and far superior to Facebook friend lists or Twitter Lists. However, we’re in the camp that people don’t want to organize their friends, no matter how gorgeous the UI. It’s just a tedious task no matter how you approach it.

Con: Doesn’t Work With Google Apps

During a Google+ Hangout session I had with Google VP of Product Management Bradley Horowitz, I learned that the biggest piece of feedback so far is that users want to use Google+ with their Google Apps accounts. It makes sense — people are attached to their email addresses, and many people (like us) primarily use email addresses linked to Google Apps accounts.

Most of the comments we saw about this problem looked like this:

“I cannot use it with my Google Apps account.” ~ Stefan Sarzio

“I cannot use with Google Apps. ” ~ Aakar Anil

Our Take: Google should make this a top priority.

Pro: Google+ Hangouts

The one feature that has stood out above all the other Google+ features is Hangouts. Hangouts, which lets up to 10 users simultaneously video chat with each other, has been a hit with the early Google+ beta testers.

Instead of creating a group video chat system where you reach to your friends to chat, users instead create “hangouts” that pop up on their feeds. Users can then join those hangouts. That small change in how group video chat is done has proven to be a winner:

“The actual design of the interface is slick, and Hangouts are cool as a get-out.” ~ Christopher Carfi

“Hangouts. ‘Nuff said.” ~ PaulDavid Shrader

“You can make circles of just people you are working with; do a 10 person video chat with them, group mobile messaging, google chat, etc. So far very useful for collaboration and with a few tweeks could be near perfect.” ~ Dillon Rhodes

Our Take: Hangouts is Google+’s killer feature. With a few tweaks, it could be an amazing video platform.

Con: Lack of Search

Google is known for search, so why doesn’t it have a search engine for finding content your friends are sharing? That’s the question a lot of users are asking:

“I have to say that for the King Kong of search to release a social service that is presently not searchable – strikes me as a little odd and noteworthy.” ~ Wayne Schulz

“Leaves a little to be desired when filling out profile information, would be nice to see cohesive search tools.” ~ Carl V. Lewis

“Searching for people in the top field opens a new tab instead of displaying results in the stream.” ~ Lenny Neslin

Our Take: It’s not a big deal now that Google+ doesn’t have Stream search, but Google had better put it on the list of things to implement in the next two months if it hasn’t done so already.

Pro (and Con): Google+ Is Everywhere

Google SVP of Social Vic Gundotra told Mashable that the company named its social platform Google+ because it’s designed to be an extension of Google. The plus sign is just a small addition to the Google logo because the search giant wants people to think of Google+ as just Google.

As part of that initiative, Google+ is on every Google product. Google+ notifications appear in Gmail, Google Docs and almost every Google products. We wouldn’t be surprised to see it pop up on YouTube sometime in the future, either.

Most people seem to like that Google+ is accessible no matter where they are, but some have expressed their reservations about it. Some people don’t want their email and their search to be social in any way. The result is that the ubiquity of Google+ has created a sharp divide:

“It’s everywhere. Checking mail, G+ is there, Addind calendar entries, G+ is there.” ~ Patrik Björklund

“G+ is nearly ubiquitous. It’s present across all the google tabs I keep open anyway.” ~ Rob Michael

“I work in Google. I don’t need an annoying thing at the top of the page telling me that I need to go do something. If I wanted that, I would head over to plus.google.com and see.” ~ David Aronchick

“I use Gmail and Google Reader a lot and with Google+ I get notifications, can comment and interact with my circles, without leaving the Google tool I use at this time. I call this efficient!” ~ Jan Firsching

“Cons: Integrates with the Google ecosystem.” ~ Ciro Villa

Our Take: Google is smart to integrate Google+ into every part of its empire — it creates engagement and reinforces that Google intends to be social. It needs to provide assurances that private emails and private search remain private, though. How to do that may be one of its toughest challenges.