Chocolate Lime would like to wish all of our clients old and new along with our blog subscribers a very Happy New Year!  We hope 2011 is a great year for all of you.

In the last couple of months we’ve been busy bees, working with some great clients to produce websites we hope they all love.

Some examples of our recent projects are:

Gorgeous Graffiti – A design studio with an enviable reputation for unique and elegant contemporary wall art.  Visit www.gorgeousgraffiti.co.uk for more information on the great canvases produced by this talented individual.

Lothian Recycling – A Edinburgh and Lothians based company who donate to local and international charities through the recycling of clothing and textiles.  Visit them at www.lothian-recycling.co.uk for more information.

Brain Train Academy – On the courses, the time we spend together will literally change your life, before you can elicit fast and lasting change in others you must make some profound changes in your own life. Visit www.braintrainacademy.co.uk for more information about the courses on offer.

Prior to heading off to Portugal with the family, we’ve just published two new websites for our clients.

Hospitality Advisory Services (HAS)

Stephan Riegel of Hospitality Advisory Services provided us with a simple brief – take his existing website and make it fresh and clean.  The result can be found here – Hospitality Consulting

AWS Recruitment Edinburgh

Alan Surgeon of AWS Recruitment Edinburgh asked us to provide him with a redesign of his existing business card / static website.  You can view the new website at – AWS Recruitment

1. Know Your Website Purpose

This is probably the most important step. Everything else leads back to your website’s purpose and goals. Your website goals could include anything from converting visitors to members, informing existing members of latest news, building your email newsletter, building awareness, and collecting donations.

2. Make it Easy to Use

Everyone appreciates a website that is easy to use. The layout design should be consistent throughout the site, the menu should be easy to use, the text easy to read, and links easy to identify.

3. How to Get Involved

Let visitors know how they can become involved. Donating money is one way, but you should also suggest other ways they can get involved.

4. Accept Donations / Subscriptions

You should have a donation or subscriptions button that is obvious and easy to find. Accepting online credit card donations is easier than you may think. Including a funding goal is also a good idea.  This let’s members and visitors feel part of achieving a common goal.

5. Keep in Touch

Allow your visitors to easily stay in touch with what you are doing. Provide an email newsletter sign up box, and have links to your Twitter and Facebook pages.

6. Use Video

Video is the way of the future. It doesn’t need to be fancy, most digital cameras can now take video. As well as using the video clip on your own website, upload it to YouTube and other video sharing sites to gain leverage.

7. Contact Information

Make it easy for visitors to find your contact details. Don’t just have a contact page, but also include your contact details in a side-block or in your site’s footer.

8. Ongoing Maintenance

Use a Content Management System (CMS), so you can edit your website yourself. This will allow you to keep your website up-to-date and relevant.  One such CMS framework is Joomla.  This framework is extremely powerful and can be easily extended to grow as your website does.

9. Write for Search

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing only read text. They read all the text on your website, so give some thought to write the words that people are searching for.  And, were you are using images, ensure you have included alternative text tags (Alt Tags) to allow the search engines to understand your content better.

10. Measure the Results

Use Google Analytics to track how visitors find your website, and what they are looking at. Otherwise it’s difficult to measure how well your website is achieving its goals.

Chocolate Lime recently launched another website for local company. Livingston Machine Tools- a company with over 30 years experience, specialising in late – model Used CNC Lathes and Machining Centres

Click the link to view Livingston Machine Tools quality Used CNC Lathes and other Machining Centres

Chocolate Lime have just seen two websites go live!

Midlothian Hypnotherapy Centre – New Website

Midlothian Hypnotherapy Centre can improve your lifestyle, help you to become more confident, get over fears and phobias, revitalise your relationships, break bad habits and become happier.

Just Walking the Dogs – Website Redesign

Just Walking the Dogs offering a range of pet services in Livingston, West Lothian