Taking Credit Cards

Taking credit cards
You see the question asked constantly on the various message boards about taking credit cards. I’ll leave the debate to the message boards about whether or not to accept them and will give some information about to take them.There are a few options for taking credit cards: physical machine, virtual terminal online, PayPal or other website plug-in.

I’ll start with saying I personally use PayPal for my credit card processing (although I have used another website-more on that later). I’ve never used a machine so I can’t speak from experience on that but from what I’ve heard you can get lower transaction fees with physical machines than some of the online resources. The main difference is a lot of machine contracts include a monthly fee.

A virtual terminal basically gives you most of the features of a physical machine without actually having the machine. You do everything via a secure website or via cell phone. If you do a search on any search engine for “virtual credit card terminal” you’ll find a ton of websites that offer that service. For this example, I’m going to use ProPay.com.

ProPay.com offers a few levels of service, all of which have no monthly minimums. There is an annual fee ranging from $34.95-$399.95 depending on how much business you’ll be getting per transaction/month. I would guess most DJ companies would choose either the premium ($59.95 a year) or Premium Plus ($119.95 a year) which gives a monthly maximum of $3000 or $5000 dollars. With a ProPay account you can accept MasterCard, Visa, Discover and American Express and fees start at 3.25% for MC/Visa/Discover and 3.75% for American Express.

PayPal.com has a variety of options, including sending a bill via e-mail, virtual terminal and a payment gateway on your website. With PayPal there are no monthly or annual fees (unless you’re using their virtual terminal, which could incur a monthly fee), you just pay a percentage of each transaction plus a flat fee per transaction. The amount you pay per transaction starts at 2.9% and goes down from there depending on the volume of business you do.

2Checkout.com is a service that offers the ability to take payments via your website. 2Checkout charges a one-time $49 sign-up fee along with $.45 per transaction and 5.5% of each sale amount. There are no monthly fees, no minimums or other fees. Since it’s more than 2% higher per transaction than PayPal you might wonder why some people would use 2Checkout. I personally used 2Checkout for a few years because PayPal had the stigma of not being professional. However, there are so many big companies and websites that now offer PayPal as a payment option I personally think it’s very accepted nowadays for businesses to accept payment via PayPal.

Questions

Do you have a question about websites, improving your online presence or other internet related questions? If so, send it to jim@discoverydjs.com for possible inclusion in an upcoming column.

Website reviews…

Since it’s been a while since I’ve had a column, I should probably introduce website reviews to new readers and give a refresher to previous readers.

Every week, I review 1-2 DJ websites that are submitted to me via e-mail (jim@discoverydjs.com). I’ll tell you what’s good, what can use improving and will take an in-depth look at the overall effectiveness of your website. If you’d like your website to be reviewed for a future column please e-mail me the link to your website.

http://www.a2zmobilemusic.com

Good:
Contact information at the bottom of every page.

Suggestions:

Check punctuation & capitalization throughout website.
Remove links to AddMe, Wedding Spot, WeDJ, etc. from home page….create a links page for those links.
Don’t write in caps-it’s considered shouting.
How do I book my DJ page is cluttered.
Somewhere up in the top tan portion of every page you should have your location and/or phone number.
The background on your DJ Intelligence pages is very distracting.
You have some stock photos on your site and a photo gallery but you could use some pictures from your events on some of your pages.
You have some underlined text that isn’t a link.
Make your logo in the top left also link to your home page.
Your keywords in your meta tags don’t have any mention of Dallas, Ft. Worth or any location.
Some text is centered and some is left justified. Stay consistent (I personally think left justified looks better with your design).
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago and lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several national DJ conventions about websites and has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

Let’s Not Get Personal

Last week I covered what to put on your website. This week I’ll be addressing the things you should leave off your site and common design mistakes.Personal pictures: It’s ok to have a family picture on your bio/about us page but anything more than that should be saved for your personal website or blog. Remember, it’s a business website.

Anything that spins or blinks: Have that cheesy spinning mirror ball on your site? Dump it. Have blinking par can lights? Drop those too. Just like clothes change style from year to year, websites do too and animated gifs went out of style five years ago. So, if you still have anything like that on your site, get rid of it-yesterday.
Weather: People can go to a weather website or look out their window if they want to see the weather. Probably one of the most useless things I’ve ever seen on a DJ site.

Pointless links: I’ve seen links to games, movies, search engines and more on DJ websites. Do you really think someone is on your website, goes to your links page and looks for a link to Google? Probably not. They’re on your website to find out information about your services. So, cut out any links that aren’t related to your business. It’s a waste of space, time and for the 1 person who might actually click on them, it could distract them from your site.

Really long pages: If you have to scroll the wheel on your mouse more than two times, the page is probably too long. Think about it from and end-users point of view-how much are you really going to read about a DJ company? Most people will probably read for 2-3 minutes (check your website stats and you’ll see that’s true).

So, make those 2-3 minutes count. Also use that time to engage them with something interactive-e-mail link, contact form, instant quote, music search, etc.
Too many buttons: I’ve seen DJ websites with a button (and page) for every type of event they provide services for. It’s a bit overwhelming to a website visitor to see 25 buttons/links for pages on your site. I personally think between 5-10 buttons is good. Any more or any less can work too but be careful because you could be leaving the website visitor with too many or not enough options.

Pop-ups or banner ads: Usually free hosting sites make you have banner ads or pop-ups-not very professional for a business. Pay for your hosting so your website visitors don’t have to deal with that.

Google Adsense/other advertising: This is really up to each business owner however I personally wouldn’t want this on my site. I do know some people who make some good money from Google Adsense links on their site, however I wonder how much traffic they’re driving away from their website.

Coming soon: When was the last time you were on a website for a large company and you saw ‘Coming Soon’ on a page? I doubt it’s ever happened. It’s frustrating as an end-user and it makes the company look unorganized & unprofessional. Don’t launch a page until it’s ready.

Questions

Do you have a question about websites, improving your online presence or other internet related questions? If so, send it to jim@discoverydjs.com for possible inclusion in an upcoming column.

Website review

Have a website you want reviewed? E-mail it to jim@discoverydjs.com

This week’s website is: http://www.beatmasterdj.com

Good:

Good bio.
Good pictures-nice the way they pop-up.

Suggestions:

You need your location somewhere on the home page.
Add a call to action (phone or e-mail) on the home page.
Add text to the home page.
Site looks homemade. Probably ok for schools/kids but I’d recommend either a template site or hire a designer to make you a site.
Some of your pages that require scrolling you have arrows at the bottom-any way to put scroll arrows on the side?
What’s supposed to be on the music page? Just says coming soon now. Either put something up there or remove the page.
Equipment page: It’s a waste-the main people who will look at it are other DJs.
Very lacking in text. What types of events do you DJ for? How about a company history/owner bio?

Overall this site looks like it was put together in about an hour or two. I’d recommend putting some serious time in on it if you want to make it better.
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago and lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several national DJ conventions about websites and has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

Have You Been Framed?

Free your website from frames
I’ve mentioned frames a few times in past columns but haven’t gone in-depth about why frames are bad and why you should make sure your website doesn’t use frames. Here’s some information for why you want to avoid frames:Some search engines don’t recognize pages that use frames.
Some browsers don’t render a frames page properly so the page will look weird to people looking at it with some browsers.
From the Google help center: “Frames can cause problems for search engines because they don’t correspond to the conceptual model of the web. In this model, one page displays only one URL. Pages that use frames display several URLs (one for each frame) within a single page. If Google determines that a user’s query matches the page as a whole, it will return the entire frame set. However, if the user’s query matches an individual frame within the larger frame set, Google returns only the relevant frame. In this case, the entire frame set of the page will not appear.”
It’s old technology. Years ago frames was the main way websites kept their navigation structure separate from the rest of the website to make for easier updating. Now, there are many other options like PHP and ASP.
Frames pages can limit the flexibility of what you can do with your design.
Questions
Have a question about websites or anything to do with marketing your business online? Send your question to jim@discoverydjs.com for possible inclusion in a future column.

Website reviews

Would you like your website reviewed in an upcoming column? Send your website address to jim@discoverydjs.com.

http://www.sweetsoundsdj.com

Good:

Location, phone & e-mail right at the top of every page.
Nice pictures on the home page.
Flash testimonials are nice (just slow it down a little….went too fast).
Suggestions:

Shrink the ‘Sweet Sounds Entertainment’ graphic on the home page by about 75%.
Right now, you have to scroll down quite a bit to get to any text. Try shrinking the graphic and pictures and do a text wrap so the images show up next to the text.
Drop the picture on the top of the weddings page and start with the text about weddings (same with the parties page & FAQ page).
Add a bio page.
Add a pictures page.

http://www.a1dj.net

Good:

Location & phone at the top of every page.
Professional looking design.
Impressive list of country clubs & hotels as well as corporate referrals.
Nice music suggestions and very neatly organized.
Suggestions:

Allow users to click on pictures on the schools page to see larger versions.
No ‘call-to-action.’ While you have your phone number all over your website, how many people are visiting from work where they can’t call? Or what about people who just want to see if you’re available?
Copyright information at the very bottom of the music page is much larger than the other pages.
When someone clicks on the ‘Clients’ button why not take them right to the login page instead of making them click another link?
Add a bio(s) page.
Vendor links currently open in the same window. You want them to open in a new window so if they click on the links when they’re done looking at that site they’ll end up back at your site.
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago, having lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several national DJ conventions about websites and has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

Keeping It Fresh

Keeping your site freshMany of you probably have a list of websites you visit every day or every few days to check out any new content. While people aren’t visiting your DJ website that often you should have people visiting your website every day so it’s important to make sure the content is fresh. How often should you update your website? That’s completely up to you but I think at a minimum once per quarter you should review your website page-by-page to see what needs to be updated. If you use Outlook or another program for your business calendar, set a reminder for once per quarter (or if you’re really ambitious once per month) to go through your website.
What exactly should you be looking for? There may be some time specific text on your website like “We’ve been in business for 10 years” that needs to be updated. Other content like pictures and testimonials should also be updated on a pretty regular basis. Finally, it’s just a good idea to read through the text on your website to make sure it still reflects the image you’re trying to portray.

Questions
Have a question about websites or anything to do with marketing your business online? Send your question to jim@discoverydjs.com for possible inclusion in a future column. You can also send requests for a web site review as well.
Website reviews

http://www.djkingslex.com

Good:

Phone and location at the top of the home page.
Good video.
Good staff page (although punctuation, grammar & capitalization could really use some work!)
Suggestions:

Remove the spinning mirror ball on the home page.
Remove the effect of having your company name as the cursor..
Why do you have a picture of some guy that links to the NBC website? (Just figured this out. Seems like something cool for you personally but this remember, this is a business website, not a personal website so you should remove that).
In memory of Uncle Chuck link should be remove too. It’s a nice gesture but again it’s something for a personal website.
You have an image of a screen shot of PCDJ, then a graphic EQ below that and a mixing board. That really doesn’t serve any purpose so you should just remove all of that.
Overall your video was good but some of the grammar & punctuation needed some work. Something I noticed a lot in the video and a lot on your website is words being capitalized that shouldn’t be capitalized.
You have to scroll down pretty far to get to any text about your company on your home page. You should move that all the way to the top.
You mentioned in your e-mail you designed the site and it does look like a home made site. I would recommend hiring a professional to design your site and then you can make any updates you want (that’s what I’ve done with my website).
Part of a good website is consistency. All of your pages should have a consistent header with your company name, logo, phone possibly even your location.
Drop the sound from your website…or allow the user to start the music themselves.
I clicked on some of the pictures on your weddings page and it took me to a weddings website…why? You should remove those links. Also, it would be nice if you could click on those pictures to enlarge them.
Song listing…why not use a tool that allows people to search and even build their request list online?
Vendors links should open in a new window.
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago, having lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several national DJ conventions about websites and has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

Mitzvahs & Reviews

After a short hiatus I’m back with a column that includes a question about a website just for mitzvahs & a couple website reviews. Check them out below as you might see something that could apply to your website too.Question
My name is Brian Babcock, and I’m 15 and currently running a mobile DJ company. I have been DJing for around 3 years, and this year has really taken off for me. I finally got a website up, but I know it could use a thing or two. My future plans are to use DJ Intelligence services such as quote generator, availability checker, etc. But as I’m only getting 1-2 gigs a month now it’s all a question of money. My other question pertains to bat/bat mitzvahs. I want to design a page dedicated to bar/bat mitzvahs because I do DJ for them, but would like some tips on how to successfully put one together. My website address is www.djbrianbmobile.com I’d eventually like to have a flash template, but that will be in a long time because adobe flash is very expensive.

Brian Babcock

Answer

I personally don’t have any experience with mitzvahs so I can’t give any advice for a mitzvah-only website. However, in my opinion a website for a specific event type can be a great way to target a market. In my case, I have a main website for my business that’s pretty generalized and can appeal to a variety of events types. I also have a weddings only website that’s very basic and was specifically written & designed for weddings. If you’re looking to build your mitzvah business or just think a separate website for mitzvahs would be helpful then go for it.

As far as Flash, I usually recommend against it for a variety of reasons. The main reason is the problems it can cause with search engine placement. It can also be difficult/expensive to update. I would recommend saving some money and hiring a designer to create a cool HTML based website that will appeal to that market.
Website review

Have a website you want reviewed? E-mail it to jim@discoverydjs.com.

The first website this week is: www.djbrianbmobile.com

Good:

Location right at the top of all pages. (Why not put your phone number up there too?)
Nice looking design and overall good copy.
Good flow to the website-you link to other pages in your site to guide visitors to relevant information

Suggestions:
If you can make changes to the design, I’d recommend re-designing the top 1/3rd of your pages. It takes up almost my whole browser window for just your buttons, logo & phone number, so I have to scroll to see any text. If you can shrink some of that stuff down so there’s some text visible without scrolling that would be good.
Remove link/banner for ‘A DJ Revolution’ from the home page-why direct someone to another website, especially from your home page. Either remove the link all together or put it on a links page. Also make sure the link opens in a new window.
On some pages only the word ‘Teen’ in ‘Teen Events’ is a link….make both words part of the link.

You mentioned in your e-mail adding DJ Intelligence to your website-I think that’s a great idea. Right now there’s no real call-to-action. DJ Intelligence will help with that and give some interactivity to your website.

Button on the ‘Teen Events’ page that says ‘Contact’ goes to the services page when it should go to the contact page.

Link your logo so if someone clicks on it they go to the homepage.

The next site is: www.gjentertains.com

Good:

Great looking design.
I like the text on the home page-it’s a bit of a different approach from other sites and I think it works well.
MP3 clips on home page are great!
Good pictures on the weddings page.
Nice photo gallery…pictures look great.
Good pictures by the testimonials.
Nice integration of DJ Intelligence tools.

Suggestions:
No mention of your location anywhere on your home page. The only tip is the link to the San Diego ADJA.

I like the design of the site but I wonder if you could better use the space on the left where your image currently is. Since you already have your picture on the home page I’m not sure it’s needed on every page. I’d recommend either cutting that out all together or making it much smaller and putting something else there. What else could you put there? Maybe some testimonials? Company news/announcements? Pictures?

It looks like this is a frames based website. Most search engines don’t like frames and it could hurt your search engine placement. You should consider dropping the frames ASAP.
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago and lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several national DJ conventions about websites and has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

Sites To See

Have a website you want reviewed? E-mail it to jim@discoverydjs.com and I’ll review it in an upcoming column here on MobileBeat.com. Your website review may even make it into an upcoming issue of Mobile Beat magazine!The first website this week is: www.pjthedjnj.com

Note: PJ included a note in his e-mail that he primarily markets to schools so to consider that when checking out his site. If you market to a particular event type feel free to let me know that in your e-mail.

PJ also let me know his phone number isn’t front & center since he’s in college and e-mail is a lot more convenient for him. I’m in a similar boat with a full-time job during the week so I only have my phone number on my contact page. I prefer people to e-mail me and if you prefer the same your best bet is to not put your phone number on every page but just on a contact page. However, I recommend putting it on at least one page-companies that don’t have any phone numbers on their website makes some people hesitant to do business with them.

Good:

I really like the pop-up map when you click on Hamilton, NJ on your home page (I might have to borrow that idea!).
Very clean & professional looking website.
Good colors & look that appeals to your target market.
You have a lot of text links, which can be good, just be careful with too many as people can get confused constantly bouncing around the site. Also, many of your pages open in a new window which can get annoying to a website visitor.
Light show pictures look good and the pop-up feature works well.
Good pictures throughout the site.
VIP login is a good idea and is engaging to website visitors.
Very nice bio page and the picture & article are a nice touch.
Good FAQ’s…I saw some questions I’ve never seen anywhere else before. You might consider adding a link to it right from your navigation.

Suggestions:

I’m a fan of bullets (you’ll see me use it a lot in this column too!) but I think a little bit of actual copy on the home page would be good. Maybe a paragraph talking about your company, your services, etc.
Drop the top bullet point…your company name is already at the top of the page.
List some of the big cities near you that you will travel to on your home page-it will help with your search engine placement for those cities.
The next site is: www.jukeboxexpress.com

Good:

Nice design with soft colors.
Pictures across the top of the page look good.
Good idea having the pricing button at the top.
The map to your office is pretty neat (I took a look at their website…never heard of it but a great idea!).
FAQ page very neat & organized.
Reception site list is great….very good idea!
Video testimonial is a good idea (might want to include a link to it on your testimonials page).
Very impressive list of corporate clients.
Excellent DJ bios…really helps clients get to know their DJ.

Suggestions:

It would be nice if the subset of buttons under each category stayed there when you’re in that area. For instance, when I was in the wedding’s area it would’ve been nice if I could’ve just clicked on ‘Recent Testimonials’ instead of having to hover over weddings and then go down to the recent testimonials button.
You have your city on the home page, but way down at the bottom. You do say Twin Cities near the top, which may be enough, but it would also be nice to have something in the opening paragraph with your location.
Put a short list of cities you provide your services in on your home page-it will help with search engine placement.
I personally think people would rather read testimonials from past clients than other vendors, so I would flip-flop your testimonials page and put facility and vendor comments below past client comments.
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago and lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several DJ conventions about websites and has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

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