Category: Child Care Website Templates

How to effectively add a video to your child care website

blog3You may be considering if you should, and how you would, add a video to your daycare website.  First, it is an excellent way to add a professional touch and an interactive feel to your homepage and can really set your site apart from your competitors.  Here are a few of our clients who are doing it right:

http://creativecarecs.com
http://crawlers2scholars.com

Here’s the best way to add video to your website:

  1. If you don’t already have a social media video channel for your business, create one.  Most of my clients create a YouTube channel but you could also use a similar service like Vimeo.
  2. You’ll want to upload any and all videos to your channel and make sure to add your keywords to the videos as the search engines include videos in their search results. Title your videos well as the titles will appear on the video on your website.
  3. On the video settings, there is an area where you can copy the Video Embed code.  You can configure how large or small you want it but I think larger looks generally better and makes more of an impact.  Install this HTML code (or have your website company install) on your website. A few tips: Don’t set it to “autoplay” as this can be an annoyance to your visitors and set it so that it does not play suggested videos after it’s complete. I have found that most of the time, it displays some videos that you wouldn’t necessarily want playing on your website.

Good luck and if you’re not already a customer, we hope to be doing business with you soon!

Top features of our new and improved Photo Gallery

blog2We are so happy to announce that our integrated Photo Gallery was recently updated to address some valuable feedback from our customers.  Our customers wanted the ability to have multiple albums within their photo gallery, for the photo gallery to be mobile responsive, easier navigation through the photos and the ability to easily and quickly upload lots of photos at once to the back end system.

Here is a live client site with the new photo gallery installed:  http://milesofsmilesdaycare.com/photos.html

Our upgraded photo gallery is included in our Professional Child Care Website Setup Package but can also be added on to our other setup packages at an additional fee.

If you’re not already a customer, we hope to be working with you soon!

5 Signs Your Website is Overdue for an Update

You may have been putting off that website redesign for some time – thinking, “Well, maybe it’s not that bad” or “Maybe I am getting more business from my website than I think.”  If you haven’t had a fresh update to your website in more than a year or two, it’s probably overdue for an update and here are some signs that it’s time for that investment:

  1. Low site traffic and/or poor search engine rankings:  Check your site visitor stats and view the trends over the past 12 to 36 months to see if traffic is steady or falling off.  Also, check your site position on Google with some key search terms and if you’re not where you want to be, you need a web developer who can help you with SEO.innv
  2. Outdated content or design:  Web design trends change year after year and over the years, sites have evolved graphically, structurally, and in terms of user-friendliness.  Your site may be doing you more harm than good if the overall design is very outdated and could actually be driving people away from your business when they visit your site.
  3. Your site is not mobile-responsive: Your website needs to be mobile-friendly considering the fact that more and more people are visiting websites on smart phones or mobile devices than ever before. If your site is more than a year or two old, it probably isn’t mobile-responsive and Google has noticed. Make sure you don’t get penalized for not having a user-friendly website.
  4. Dead links or pages: Nothing can drive away a new potential customer faster than clicking on dead links on your site – especially on your homepage. Do a full site check and make sure you address any and all of these.
  5. Low or no interactivity on the site:  There are so many ways that you can incorporate features on your site that take your pages from boring to exciting. Consider a home page video introduction video or a few video client testimonials.  You could even have a Google interactive tour video added so that people can get a peek inside your facility without having to make an appointment.  If your business has an active Facebook page, add a Facebook widget showing the live feed right on your homepage.  Add a feature that allows people to navigate through slides on your homepage that features your latest announcements or benefits of choosing your business.

I hope this post has been helpful in making the decision to update your website and as always, if we can be of any assistance, don’t hesitate to contact us at info@websitesfordaycares.com.

Are you taking advantage of free advertising with Google Places?

If you haven’t added your local business to Google’s local map tool (called “Google Places”) do it today!  You are missing out on your business showing up in the local results that appear at the very top when someone searches for a local business.  Here is a one-sheet flyer on all the benefits of Google Places.  Unlike the way Google indexes and ranks websites automatically, your business won’t get added to Google Places unless you submit your website to them.  So, here’s how you do it:

  1. Google-Places-1Go to www.Google.com/places and click the link to add your new business. You can add lots of details regarding your business so take advantage of all of the available fields so that your listing stands out from the rest.
  2. You will have to wait for a letter to be mailed to your physical address to confirm your location.  This letter will contain a confirmation code that you will need to enter back on Google’s website.
  3. Once your listing is confirmed (typically takes a week or two), you should start to see your business appear when someone searches for your type of business in their local area.
  4. Don’t forget to add an embedded Google map to the contact page of your website AND be sure to take advantage of Google+ reviews as those appear alongside your business listing!

You don’t get many free business advertising opportunities but this is one that could send you lots of organic (and free) internet traffic your way so don’t delay!

Mobile Responsive Child Care Website Design

You may or may not have heard the term “mobile responsive” but if you haven’t (and you have a website) you should read this article to find out more.

First, mobile-responsive just means that your website is setup to automatically reformat to fit any screen size (on a computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.)  It means you don’t have to squeeze, expand, scroll left-right to be able to read a website on a mobile device (and we all know how much we hate to do that.)

mobilerespoWithout going into a lot of explanation, let’s just say that Google thinks this is now a pretty important aspect of what makes a quality website so that means it should be important to you too.  (Unless you don’t care about those silly website rankings.)  Bottom line: you don’t want your website to be pushed down in the rankings because your site isn’t optimized for mobile users.

Websites for Daycares now builds all new websites in mobile-responsive format and if you have any questions about this topic, feel free to drop us a line or call us at 979-848-8266.

Here are a few examples of recent sites we built that are mobile-responsive.  Open them in your browser window and resize the window to watch the content rearrange for optimal viewing.

www.perfectbeginningschildcare.com.au

www.boldspringsacademy.com

www.kiddieuinc.com

www.childrenscastle.org

How to incorporate a Google Calendar with your daycare website

Our clients ask us very often: “I want to add a live, interactive calendar to my site that lets people view our upcoming events and important dates.  What’s the best way to do that?”

Answer:  “Google Calendar!”

google+calendarFirst, here’s a sample site with the Google Calendar installed:
http://jmackids.com/schedules.html

The beauty of this tool (other than it being free!) is that you manage your Google Calendar from your desktop / mobile device and the website updates automatically.  You don’t have to go to your website after you update your calendar – it’s instant.  Nice!

To install, just create your Google Calendar and on the left, beside your calendar name, you’ll see an option to “Share this calendar.”  On the next screen, click on the “Calendar details” tab at the top and you’ll see the iframe script there in the “Embed this Calendar” section.  (You can customize the color, size, etc in that spot too.)

Take that code and login to your website CMS.  Click where you want it and hit the HTML button.  Paste in that iFrame code and then preview the page to see if you need to do any resizing.

Don’t forget, you can always contact us for support!

Are you utilizing online reviews for your child care business?

Whether you have been in business for 5 months or 5 years, it is important that you share positive customer feedback with potential new customers.  Your website may include a Testimonials or Reviews page but your website visitors are going to know that you put those there and may not trust the reviews.  The best approach is to get your happy customers to talk about your business on 3rd party, social media sites.

???????????????????????At a minimum, you should be asking customers to review you on Google+ and Yelp.  Your reviews on these 2 websites will have a direct result on your search engine results because they rank very highly for local business and mobile searches.  If you have 10 or 15 5-star ratings with these sites, your listing is going to stand out on their search results against those with few or none.  Make sure you have a business profile page setup with both of these sites and customize it to the maximum extent possible.  Add a banner photo on Google+ and include details about your business.  Remember, most people will see this page or results before they find the link to your site so include the highlights and link to your website, of course.

Share the link to both sites with your customer base and also include it in your email signature, website, and social media pages.  It’s important to keep the reviews fresh and up-to-date so try to actively keep this a priority.

Once you have some established reviews on both sites, take advantage of the website widgets that you can add to your website.  This will allow your website visitors to read your reviews on those sites and also allow current customers another way to leave your business feedback.

If you utilize these sites and actively pursue positive feedback from your customers, your business will receive more traffic and conversions and ultimately more business!

Should you have any questions or need assistance friends, please contact me. I’m here to help you and as always, I would love to hear from you!

Using your personal Facebook account as your business page? Don’t!

A high percentage of our clients utilize Facebook to promote their business by keeping their current customers informed about their business and also to attract new customers.  It has effectively replaced blogging for a lot of my clients and it also is the place where a lot of my clients publish their latest news and updates, rather than their website.

Many of these clients however are utilizing their personal Facebook’s page for the business, which I highly advise against for the following 4 reasons:

1. Facebook tells you not to at the risk of having your personal page deleted.

2. You can’t use the Facebook Like Box widget on your website because that application only recognizes true Facebook Page links. You won’t be able to add that neat little widget on your website that lets people “like” your business right on your website.

3. People can’t “Like” your personal page.  They have to try to “friend” you.  A person who is interested in your business and wants to stay connected to your business may get confused when they can’t just “like” your page like a standard business page.  You may end up losing connections and detracting visitors because it’s obvious you don’t have your page properly setup.

4. Converting your personal page to a business page is easy! Follow Facebook’s steps for converting your page and you won’t lose your “friends”.

Should you have any questions or need assistance friends, please contact me. I’m here to help you and as always, I would love to hear from you!

Version 3.0 of WebsitesForDaycares.com Coming Soon!

We’ve been working on our new website for the past several weeks.  Will be unveiling a new design for our site, a new price structure to accommodate more child care businesses,  a new blog which will be updated with our latest projects, and an overall improved site experience.

We will be unveiling the new site very soon – thanks for staying connected with us!