Blog2023-07-06T13:34:08+00:00

Web Design Tricks, Tips and Thoughts

How to Generate More Leads Using a Website: Your 24 Hour Billboard

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Turning Your Website into a 24/7 Salesman Remember that time you set up a lemonade stand as a kid? Your hand-painted sign beckoned the thirsty folks in your neighborhood. Ah, those were the days. But guess what? Your website can be your modern-day lemonade stand, only it never packs up [...]

An In-Depth Review of Prodigy Commerce: A Comprehensive Analysis

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Hey all, I saw an ad popup recently for a competitor to WooCommerce, the main eCommerce platform used by companies using WordPress.  I'm always interested in a better WordPress eCommerce website solution if it exists so I gave plugin Prodigy Commerce a spin.  I did a 25 minute video review/analysis, [...]

Incorporating Video Content into Your Website Design

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Learn how to incorporate video content into your website design. Discover the benefits of homepage videos, product videos, testimonial videos, and educational videos. Enhance your website design with video content with Sharp Guys Web Design.

Why a Good Website Design is Crucial for Content Marketing

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Understand why good website design is crucial for content marketing. Discover how it enhances user experience, increases visibility, boosts engagement, builds trust, and supports content marketing goals. Improve your website design with Sharp Guys Web Design.

Web Design Firms – How to Find One That Rocks

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Ready to unlock your web design potential? Discover the six qualities to look for in a web design company and why Sharp Guys is your perfect match. Contact us today to embark on an extraordinary web design journey.

5 Secret Sauce Ingredients for a High-Converting Landing Page

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Picture this: You've just whipped up the most mouth-watering, finger-licking dish known to humankind. But wait, something's missing—the secret sauce! Just like a culinary masterpiece, a high-converting landing page needs its own secret sauce to truly shine. So, grab your apron, and let's get cooking as we reveal the five [...]

The Enchanted Art of SEO: A Wizard’s Guide to Conquering Search Engines

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Greetings, digital wizards and web-wandering warlocks! Have you ever gazed upon the vast realm of search engines and pondered the arcane arts of SEO? You know, the mystical practice that can make your website appear like a dazzling phoenix rising from the ashes of obscurity? Well, ponder no more, for [...]

Climbing the Google Maps Ladder: Local SEO for Small Biz

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As a small business owner, you've probably heard the buzz about local SEO (search engine optimization) and how it can help your business climb the ranks on Google Maps. But what exactly is local SEO, and how can you use it to your advantage? In this blog post, we'll explore [...]

Google Business Profile: The Easiest Way to Impact Your Local SEO

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Do you have a brick and mortar store that you would like to promote online? Or are you a software company looking for ways to improve your local search results? If so, then you need to start using Google Business Profile (which used to be called Google My Business). Google [...]

Why Is My WordPress Website So Slow? Network Solutions Sucks

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Are you here because you searched for 'Why Is My WordPress Website So Slow' and later on searched 'Network Solutions Sucks'? If so, then I have already correctly guessed that there are people that have had those searches in that exact order. If not, maybe you have only searched for [...]

Five EASY Ways to Help Your Website Get More Leads in 2022

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Are you wondering how you can generate more leads online from your website in 2022 and beyond? Digital marketing offers so many different avenues that vary in complexity and difficulty, sometimes it is hard to know where to begin. Today I'm here to provide 5 simple, easy-to-understand takeaways that can [...]

Do You Need a Website Speed Audit?

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With recent Google algorithm updates, WordPress website speed is more important than ever. The more you do to tweak your website and make it load faster, the better you will engage your audience that lands on your website. And in fact, you may even find that you can show up [...]

Nonprofit Web Design Made Easy

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Sharp Guys Web Design has over a decade of experience working with nonprofits to design or redesign their organization's websites. Many times these nonprofits range in size from smaller to larger with the average organization having 20 to 50 employees.  From nonprofit clients like St. Mary's Child Center to Water [...]

Why We Simply Offer Website Maintenance, Not Require It

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As the owner of a web design agency, it's been a constant struggle for me to understand why some agencies insist on requiring their clients to continue paying them even after their website has been fully developed. From my perspective, ongoing fees should offer genuine value, or at the very [...]

Robert L. Karlinsey, PhD

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Dr. Karlinsey was not only one of the nicest guys we have ever spoken to, he was also incredibly accomplished having a bunch of patents under his name at a young age.  His idea was to...

How You Can Make a New WordPress Website That Doesn’t Suck

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So you decided to take the step of creating a new website for your business - replacing an existing one, or coming up with something entirely new. You decide on WordPress after seeing it used on a number of friend’s websites or you may have even used it before at [...]

How to Write Engaging Email Content – My Process

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I have often heard clients express interest in creating their own email newsletters or improving their existing ones.  I typically tell them they should, but to avoid the common mistakes companies make with their emails.  Primarily the newsletters in question are salesy and boring, just like their competitors and won't [...]

Web Design in the Age of Covid – Covid-19 Banner

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When Covid hit in March, our client's WordPress websites were crucial to helping them communicate with their clients and visitors.  With many of our web design clients being essential businesses, they often were not entirely shut down even during the worse months from the onslaught of the virus.  These essential [...]

Who’s the Best Web Designer in Indianapolis?

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Google, Google, Google, will you please, tell me who's the best web designer in Indy? No, this is not just a pompous exercise to show off our 5 star Google reviews or an unnecessary rhyme, to show off my poor rhyming skills.   This is a real question that is often [...]

How to Update WordPress Website Plugins

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You or someone previous to you made the wise decision to create a WordPress website.  Now you log in for the first time in a while and you see that there are a ton of plugins that needs updated.  How do you update the WordPress website plugins and what precautions [...]

Indianapolis Digital Marketing Agencies: Where to Go?

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Deep in thought... which digital agency is right? Recently in Indiana, and more specifically in the Indianapolis-area, there have been a couple of different agencies that have either closed their doors for good or have been acquired.  When that has happened in the past, we often get a [...]

Why More Website Traffic Isn’t Always Better

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Imagine you had a farm and you had a few hens that laid eggs.  These hens were super amazing and every once in a while, one random hen would make an egg that was gold and you would sell it and make a ton of money.  Pretty soon you would [...]

How Do I Get My Company to Show Up on Google?

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Have you ever wondered, 'How do I get my company to show up on Google?'.  To answer that question, I would likely need a bit of additional content.  Do you mean, the Google Map that shows all of those companies or simply within the Google search results for a keyword [...]

Make Sure Your New B2B Website Includes These 3 Things

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We provide web design and digital marketing for a lot of industrial and manufacturing companies throughout Indiana and the rest of the country.  One thing many of these companies have in common is that they have a limited marketing team or in many cases, none at all.

Website Speed: Why So Serious?

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If you have ever been on the internet (that's a joke, of course you have, you're here right now), you more than likely have run into a slow website a time or two.  Or maybe you manage, run, or have created a website that is starting to run a bit [...]

Stop Making Awful Lead Forms

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Most companies have pretty standard lead forms on their website and almost all of them are poorly made.  Name, Phone, Email, Subject (what the hell does this even mean?), and Description - those are the standard fields I see most.  Their call to action button, the time honored (and completely [...]

Industrial Web Design: How Many Times Can I Say Robot?

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Okay, yes, I'm going to be explaining some struggles experienced by Industrial and Manufacturing companies on their website redesign mission, but I can't just jump right into industrial web design.  That wouldn't be much fun, plus how much of a robot do you think I am?  I think I should [...]

When to Call This Indianapolis Web Design Company

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Our Decade-Long Journey: Connecting with You Sharp Guys is an Indianapolis web design company that has been in business for more than 10 years.  When we first started out, organic web leads were fairly rare.  Over time they have become more frequent and we now receive a number of calls/emails [...]

Going from Intern to Manager

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Image of Jeremy using montage-type training as part of our web design learning. Hi, I'm Jeremy Butcher, the Digital Marketing Manager here at Sharp Guys Web Design. Okay, now that we're done with introductions, let's jump right into talking about some serious digital marketing and web design elements [...]

End of the Year Book Summary

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This year I have listened to or read some books.  Some of them were great, some may have been considered great but felt like a slog to me to get through.  Below is the entire list from this past 12 months but before I get to that, here are my [...]

How We Write Followup Emails

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One of the things I do after meeting with anyone, on the phone or in person, is write a custom followup email.  I do this for a number of reasons.  One, it helps keep a record of the things the potential client is interested in.  Two, it makes sure we [...]

What is Your Company’s Email Elevator Pitch?

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I often have people ask me what Sharp Guys' does.  Over the years, I have gotten a bit better giving my elevator pitch, but I don’t think I have perfected it yet.  For example, I might say something similar to what you'll find on this website's about section - “Sharp [...]

Tracking Your Revenue Through Digital Marketing

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You have a dream one night – you dream of being an eCommerce marketer and having the ability to directly attribute every dollar you spent on digital marketing to every dollar of revenue made. If you are in eCommerce and simply dreaming this and not already doing this (but have [...]

What Are Google Certifications and Are They Worthwhile?

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If this is the first time you are hearing of Google certifications, let me write a quick introduction.  Google has essentially created a platform for learning more about all of their products that they offer and a way to be certified that you know what you are doing .  And while not [...]

Don’t Use Contact Form 7 (CF7) on Your WordPress Website

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I have nothing against the author of this plugin and the tremendous work he has put into it.  It’s widely used and well known, and if you are an advanced user, you will likely have no problem not falling prey to its most common issues.  However, most people are not [...]

This Website Client is the Worst

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Several times over the past year we have started the project of creating a new website for Sharp Guys Web Design. Unfortunately, this client (ourselves) are really a pain in the butt. We keep getting 'busy with other things' and are 'too focused on our core work to keep pushing [...]

How to Set Up Google Analytics to Track Facebook Instant Traffic

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Over the last month or two I have been fighting Facebook Instant.  At first it was due to their slow, manual review process for approving new websites trying to utilize Facebook Instant.  My client's theme and usage of embeds caused numerous problems for Facebook's parsing code and the WordPress plugin [...]

How Much Do Email Marketing Lists Cost?

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My buddy and I had a website when we were 18-19 years old that has been dead for well over a decade.  I won’t use the real address (let’s call it pardonusforbadwriting.com) since the content was sports related and displays a quality of writing (that though I was proud of at the time) [...]

How Do I Get More Traffic to My Website?

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Often times this is the first thing a business owner/marketing person is interested in when we chat. It can be a good question but let's take a step back. Do you simply want eyeballs on your website's content? Probably not unless you earn money by the eyeball. Most likely, you have [...]

Why Google Analytics Should Cost $100 a Month

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No, I don't think Google needs more money. However, spending money typically has the benefit of leadership wanting to know what they're getting from it. That would mean that people would have to start looking at their Google Analytics data to find out what they can learn in order to [...]

Proving the ROI of an IndyCar is Hard

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In today's IBJ, there is an article about the 'cash woes' IndyCar teams are facing. It isn't surprising because motor racing in general is down - attendance is lower, corporate sponsors are leaving, and money is drying up. The thing that caught my eye was a quote by Michael Andretti, [...]

A Warning to Marketers Everywhere – Don’t Make This Mistake

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There is a game I can never win in public places where business is done – I call it, ‘Trying Not to Overhear Conversations After Forgetting to Bring My Headphones' (or TNTOCAFTBMH for ‘short’).  You may have just figured out that people don’t pay me very often for my naming/branding skills. [...]

Can Your Company Afford Digital Marketing (Lead Generation)

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This isn't one of those posts where I tell you, "YOU CAN'T AFFORD NOT TO DO DIGITAL MARKETING!'  Those suck.  Instead, here are four questions you should ask (yourself and others) when trying to decide whether it is worth moving forward with digital marketing.  In this context, digital marketing could include any [...]

WordPress Success: The Good, The Bad, & The Required

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Recently I created a presentation for the B2B Marketers of Indiana that revolved around WordPress.  While I did that presentation live, I did a screen captured version of one of my practice sessions a day before the event. That video is embedded below.  The presentation goes through the following and [...]

Indianapolis Web Design – Next Steps After Our Initial Call

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After a recent conversation with an Indianapolis web design prospect, I sent her the following email.  I'm sharing this with you as an example of the way we follow up with each and every prospect that goes through a needs analysis.  Some aspects have been changed for privacy reasons but [...]

My Laziness Begins and Ends With Typing

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I’ll happily shovel a snow filled driveway, work on a client’s website until 2 AM, and spend 3 hours cleaning up the house on a Sunday morning (although letting the house get so dirty is another one of my wonderful qualities). But when it comes to sitting down, typing and [...]

Web Design or Digital Marketing Agency? What’s in a Name?

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Over the last 2 weeks, this Indianapolis web design firm has had a lot going on. Since officially announcing the full time launch of the company just two Monday's ago, I have realized that the Web Design portion of the company name is a misnomer. While web design is certainly still a large part of what we do, we are now working on projects including infographic research and creation, SalesForce cleanup, logo design, lead generation and marketing consultation.

Fanning the Flames of Facebook Fandom

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If you have a business, even a small one, please remember that all of the Likes, Fans and Shares you have will not matter at all if Facebook won't allow you to speak to them. As it stands, your ‘earned’ Facebook audience will not see your news feeds 100% of the time. In fact, without paying Facebook, Facebook says only about 16%...

Trust Me, (Text) Message Received

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Yesterday I had an unusual occurrence in that I received 4 text messages from Smile Dentistry (name changed to protect the marketing department).  They came throughout the day at no particular time and for no particular reason.  The basics of this message chain: I did not know Smile Dentistry, they [...]

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