How to Design Websites for Small Businesses in 4 Easy Steps

How to design websites in 4 easy steps
Published on May 13, 2021

It’s estimated that the majority of new site visitors will spend less than 15 seconds on a website unless you’re able to capture their attention and make them want to stay longer. This is just one of the many reasons why website design is so important. You only have a short period of time to make a good first impression, engage visitors and keep them on your site. As a web designer, your small business clients are depending on you to create a site that looks great and appeals to their customers.
 

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How to Land Your First Reputation Management Client on Facebook

How to land your first reputation management client on facebook
Published on April 26, 2021

In today’s highly competitive market, online customer reviews are more important than ever for businesses large and small. What customers are saying about a business has a direct impact on sales. In fact, the majority of consumers will read online reviews before making a purchase decision and most customers will only choose a business that has 4 or more stars. Maintaining a positive online reputation on sites like Google, Yelp and Facebook is something businesses can’t afford to ignore. 
 

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Webinar: 12 Ways to Get Web Design Clients with SiteSwan

Webinar 12 ways to get web design clients
Published on April 21, 2021

RECORDED WEBINAR

Getting clients is key to any business. Without clients, you don't have much of a business at all. Whether you’ve been building websites for years, or just starting out with the SiteSwan Website Reseller Program, finding new customers is the key to growing a successful web design business and generating a steady stream of passive income.
 

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Introduction to Adding Live Chat and Chatbots to Your Website

Adding live chat and chatbots to a website
April 8, 2021

In the fast paced digital world we now live, customers demand multiple channels of communication and immediate answers to their questions online. For businesses looking to take their marketing and customer support to new heights, live chat and chatbots are two very popular solutions.

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12 Ways to Get Web Design Clients

Finding web design clients
Getting clients is key to any business. Without clients, you don't have much of a business at all. Whether you’ve been building websites for years, or just starting out with the SiteSwan Website Reseller Program, finding new customers is the key to growing a successful web design business and generating a steady stream of passive income.

Let us help you take the guesswork out of finding clients in your area with these 12 ways to get web design clients.

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How to Add Online Food Ordering to a Restaurant Website with SiteSwan

Add online ordering to restaurant website
March 30, 2021

Online food ordering has exploded over recent years. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has fueled this growth even more. With social distancing and restrictions on indoor dining in place, more and more restaurants are looking to expand their takeout and delivery service by offering online ordering to their customers. Customers are also enjoying the added benefits and convenience of online ordering including flexible scheduling and more dining options to choose from. It's safe to say that the demand for online food ordering will continue to rise even after the pandemic subsides.

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4 Ways to Market Your Web Design Agency During a Pandemic

Web design marketing ideas
February 9, 2021


If there’s one thing that we can all agree on about COVID-19, it’s that the pandemic has been an immense learning experience for the vast majority of people across the world. Many have had no choice but to completely upend their daily approach to living, and this is especially true for business owners. Running a business during a global pandemic of this scale is something no one could have expected or adequately planned for, and all of a sudden, it has become the task du jour for millions of individuals and entrepreneurs. 

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10 Common Traits of Successful Leaders that Entrepreneurs Can Learn From

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10 Common Traits of Successful Leaders that Entrepreneurs Can Learn From
February 2, 2021

The recent inauguration of the 46th United States President Joseph Biden has brought to the public sphere a renewed interest in the conversation about what makes a true leader. Many people believe that leadership skills are possessed only by a small sub-sect of 'special' individuals, however the truth is that all of us have access to the same traits as the successful leaders we look up to. One thing is for sure: taking a closer look at the traits and characteristics of leaders you respect can help move you closer to running a successful web design company with SiteSwan. 

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5 COVID-Ready Website Features Every Business Needs

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January 26, 2021
 
As we continue to face the challenges of COVID-19, many small businesses are being forced to temporarily close or move their entire operations online. A professional website is no longer an exception, but rather an essential tool that every business needs in order to survive the pandemic. As a result, affordable web design is in high demand with millions of businesses scrambling to get online. At SiteSwan, we’ve welcomed a record number of new resellers onboard, and witnessed thousands of new sites launched over the past 10 months.

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3 Ways to Make More Money as a Web Designer

3ways to make more money as a web designer
January 19, 2021

Running your own web design business can be an extremely financially rewarding career. Selling websites to small businesses comes with both upfront and recurring income, that most times can be sustained for many years. And because frequent updates are usually not requested by your clients, lots of web designers enjoy what they call "hands-off recurring income" that they can rely on month after month.

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7 Direct Sales Tips for Web Designers

7 direct sales tips for web designers
January 12, 2021

Building a successful web design business requires more than just the right software and an “eye for design." In fact, a large portion of your time and efforts will be spent on marketing and business development. Direct sales in particular can play a key role in the success of any web design business, and the more you can do to streamline your efforts, the more likely it is that they'll pay off for you.

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4 Benefits of Starting a Web Design Business During Covid-19

4 benefits of starting a web design business during covid 19
December 9, 2020

Launching a new business in the midst of a pandemic can be a scary thought. But it also presents a compelling opportunity. When most new entrepreneurs are reluctant or fearful, it’s an opportunity for you to step up your game, launch your own business and grab market share. Starting your own web design business during Covid-19 has a few other hidden benefits as well.

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Tough Times Create New Opportunities for Web Designers

New opportunities for web designers
December 1, 2020

The COVID-19 crisis has wreaked unprecedented havoc on businesses and the economy, and virtually no industry has been spared. Layoffs and downsizing are inevitable as many companies are struggling to stay afloat.

In this uncertain environment, where jobs and financial security are at risk, many individuals are choosing self-employment instead. Entrepreneurs who invest in themselves and in digital businesses are set to not only survive, but thrive during and after this pandemic.

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Why is Reputation Management Important For Small Businesses?

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November 10, 2020

Traditionally, referrals and word of mouth were the engines driving the growth for small businesses. Recommendations from family and friends built up trust for small businesses catering to local communities. This traditional form of reputation building, which was of paramount importance for small businesses at one time, has now gone digital, giving millions of customers the power to make or break any business with the click of a button.


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The Importance of a Good Website For Any Small Business

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November 6, 2020

The world is going digital at a rapid pace, and it's more important than ever for businesses to position themselves to take advantage of this trend. According to the data published by the Search Engine Journal, more than nine out of 10 online experiences start at a search engine. In simple words, if a business does not have a professionally designed website, they can be losing out on 90% of the market opportunities for their business.


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5 reasons to start a web design business before another spike
October 23, 2020

A fall COVID-19 spike could be coming. We’re already seeing a rise in COVID cases across the country and experts are predicting the coming months will be the worst spike we’ve seen in months. Will the economy be able to withstand another devastating hit? Will you have a job? Running your own web design business offers you job security that an employer can’t. Don’t put your faith or future in someone else’s hands; take control and be prepared for the worst by starting your own business today. Here are 5 reasons why you should start your own web design business before another COVID-19 spike...



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8 Tips for Running a Web Design Business Part Time with SiteSwan
8 Tips for Running a Web Design Business Part Time with SiteSwan
October 7, 2020

One of the things that makes web design such an attractive industry to be in, and such an intriguing business to start, is that it does not need to be run with a full-time commitment. Many people who offer web design do it on the side as a source of supplemental income. You don’t have to devote 40 hours a week to bring in substantial revenue when you can earn $500 - $1,000+ from each site you sell, plus residual monthly income. If you are running it efficiently, a web design business can be profitably maintained with part-time hours. Here are 8 tips to help you do that:


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September 23, 2020

If you’re a web designer or run a digital marketing agency, or thinking about getting into this field, offering Reputation Management to your clients can be an easy up-sell opportunity and a great way to expand your services, improve client retention, and increase your revenue. Understanding the basics of Reputation Management and why online reviews are important will help you successfully integrate it into your product offerings and sell it to your clients. In this webinar we discuss the important of Reputation Management and how you can sell this lucrative service to local businesses in your area.


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Start your own web design business
September 17, 2020

With everything going on in the world from the global coronavirus pandemic to wildfires to economic uncertainty, it’s never been more important to have a financial safety net that you can rely on. A financial safety net is meant to protect you and your family, at least in part, if something unexpected happens - such as losing a job or falling ill. Whether it's full-time or part-time, building and selling websites can provide a reliable and steady source of income to keep you financially stable in any economic climate.


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What is Reputation Management?

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If you’re a web designer or run a digital marketing agency, offering Reputation Management to your clients can be an easy up-sell opportunity and a great way to expand your services, improve client retention, and increase your revenue. Understanding the basics of Reputation Management and why online reviews are important, will help you be able to successfully integrate it into your product offerings and sell it to your clients.

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6 Businesses that Need a Website Now

Business that need a website
The COVID-19 crisis has a had a huge impact on small businesses everywhere. For some, a website has become their only chance for survival. For others, a website is allowing them to keep up with increased demand due to the pandemic. Whether you are looking to start or grow your web design agency, consider focusing your sales efforts on these 6 businesses that need a website now more than ever.

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7 Steps to Launching a Successful Web Design Business with SiteSwan

How to start a web design business
One of the biggest questions entrepreneurs struggle with when starting a new business is what to do first? Kicking off a new business, especially one in an industry you've never worked in before, can leave you curious about which steps you need to take to get the business off the ground.

Starting a web design business is fun and rewarding, but like anything, it takes time, hard work, and dedication to find success. As a future business owner in this space, you should have the beginning stages of ownership planned out. Use these steps as a guideline to show you the simple path to a successful launch.
 

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6 Reasons to Start a Web Design Business During COVID-19

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Have you been thinking about starting your own web design business? Don't put your entrepreneurial dreams on hold. Despite COVID-19's impact on the global economy, many industries are flourishing and businesses everywhere still need a website. In fact, this is a great time to build and sell websites to local businesses in your area. Here are 6 reasons why you should start a web design business during COVID-19.

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How to Sell Websites to Small Businesses in 5 Easy Steps

Sell websites to small businesses
If you're looking to grow a successful web design business, you need a scalable website building platform like SiteSwan. You also need an effective and scalable sales process that will allow you to consistently and quickly take on new clients. Below we outlined the 5 exact steps we used to successfully grow our own web design agency using the SiteSwan platform.

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Create Your Own Economic Stimulus Package Building Websites for Small Businesses

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The coronavirus (COVID-19) has impacted many people’s lives both physically and financially. Millions of Americans are without jobs and unemployment rates are at record highs. Not knowing if and when you’ll be back to work is a very scary feeling. Sure, an extra check from the government is nice, but it's not nearly enough for most people.  For those who want to take control of their own financial future, self-employment is a great option.

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Covid 19 53e0d0424d 1920
It feels like the world is shutting down. With the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), we are facing new challenges everyday. It’s easy to just accept our losses, hunker down and wait for better times. But many web designers are taking different approach; continuing their sales efforts, building sites, finding new opportunities, and experiencing record-breaking growth and in these unprecedented times. You can too.

Here are 8 tips to help you sell websites despite the COVID-19 pandemic...

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With everything going on in this country surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, you might be wondering  “Which businesses actually need a website now?”. The truth is, over the last few weeks, we’ve seen record numbers for new sites launched on the SiteSwan platform. With social distancing and stay-at-home orders in effect, small businesses are depending on their online presence now more than ever. The demand for affordable web design is on the rise and many SiteSwan resellers are reaping the benefits. Businesses need a website and they need it fast. For some it’s a matter of survival.
 

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With the recent global developments surrounding the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, small businesses everywhere are being forced to think outside the box in order to survive. For many, who cannot conduct business as usual by being in the office, at the store, or seeing customers, relying on their website is their only hope. Here are 5 ways small businesses can use their website to make it through these challenging times.

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Addressing Client Concerns in Uncertain Times

Covid 19
How Agencies can Respond to the COVID-19 Crisis

I recently got an email from one of our SiteSwan Resellers who wanted to know the best way to address her client's concerns about investing in a new website in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. While her client knew they needed a new website, they were hesitant to move forward with everything going on in the country. She wanted to know how to respond?

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5 Healthy Reasons to Work from Home

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Starting a home based web design business is not only be a great business opportunity, it might even be beneficial for your health. Here are 5 reasons to start your own web design business and work from home.
 
1. Avoid germs
Working from home can help you avoid harmful germs that you might otherwise come in contact with on a daily basis commuting to and from work. Mass transportation, crowded office buildings, closed door meetings, public bathrooms and elevators all expose you to other peoples’ germs and increase your risk of getting sick...

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How to Sell Reputation Management to Local Businesses

Siteswan start selling reputation management1
SiteSwan's new Reputation Management feature allows you to white label and sell review monitoring and reputation management services to your existing web design clients and other local businesses. Selling reputation management is a great way to add value to the services you are already offering, differentiate yourself from the competition and generate a new stream of recurring revenue. Below  we outline some of the main steps and tips for effectively selling Reputation Management as a service.

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8 Ways to Improve Website Accessibility and ADA Compliance

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The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) protects the rights of individuals with disabilities and helps ensure that "places of public accommodation," including websites, are accessible to anyone including people with disabilities. While there are currently no exact prescriptions for making your website 100% ADA compliant there are several things you can do to help protect yourself from legal liability and improve your website's accessibility by following these best website practices. 


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Here’s Why Your Google PageSpeed Score Does Not Matter

Amazon page speed 20190629
Let me start by saying we all know a slow loading website when we see one. And we all get frustrated by them.

Websites that take a long time to load can turn off visitors who are coming to your site and can potentially turn away hundreds of customers in the process. There is no argument there. That’s why at SiteSwan, we spend a lot of time optimizing our websites for fast load times on all devices, and it shows – check out your website built on SiteSwan from any device and you will witness lightning-fast load times nearly every time. So you may be wondering why your Google PageSpeed Insight score isn't a lot higher?

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Case Study: Pipestone Publishing

Pipestone publishing
Case Study by Jim Haigh - Swimming mightily upstream against the gloomy narrative of "News Deserts," the Pipestone County Star has not missed its weekly deadline even once in 139 years. The family owned media company's track record is even more remarkable when you consider the fact that the thermometer rarely pushes above freezing between Election Day and Easter.

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Case Study: eBusiness.Works

Ebusiness.works
Case Study by Jim Haigh - A Christian family man from Texas, forced into a career change, discovers SiteSwan as a way to make a great living helping small businesses thrive online. It’s a compelling story about how a preacher turned into a White Label Website superstar, while staying grounded in family and faith, and finally discovering the freedom to do what he wants, when he wants.

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SiteSwan Announces New Integration with AgeVerify

Age verify integration
November 6, 2018 - Great news for SiteSwan Website Builder white label resellers! Opportunity knocked, and we whipped the door wide open to serving some of the fastest growing industries in your markets.

Business is booming in hometown beer. According to the Brewers Association, the number of small and independent craft brewers grew another 16% in 2017, with a total now eclipsing 6,300 on Main Street, USA. Local wineries are experiencing similar growth. And with the surge in alternatives to conventional cigarettes comes phenomenal growth in local retailers catering to electronic alternatives and other vaping products.

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Case Study: Genesee Valley Penny Saver

Gvp logo
Case Study by Jim Haigh - In only their first 9 months as a SiteSwan Website Builder white label reseller, the Genesee Valley Penny Saver has significantly enhanced their customer relationships. Having already designed over a dozen engaging and effective websites, with even more in production, the family-owned publishing company founded in Avon, New York back in 1948 has, "rapidly evolved into a one-stop solution for our local businesses," reports Marketing Manager, Mary Shepard.

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Case Study: Exchange Media Group

Exchange logo
Case Study by Jim Haigh - The family owned Exchange Media Group is proudly primed for their 40th Anniversary. The publishing company that Will Thomas and sister Katie McNabb's father, Bill, founded in 1979 "to connect buyers and sellers" is successfully weaving together the print and digital landscape of the communities they serve. Today they are "making connections" exponentially, and the future looks brighter than ever.

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Case Study: Delta Digital Strategies

Delta digital
Case Study by Jim Haigh - The Mathes brothers, Joe and Mike, grew up with printer's ink in their veins, working together as kids at their father's newspaper. They founded Delta Publications in 1988, with strong growth in their first 20 years, but found themselves face to face with an advertising sales wall during a sudden, steep national decline in print ad sales. By embracing SiteSwan, they discovered other digital solutions – tools that helped them break through that wall and justified starting a digital agency sister company with responsive website design revenue at its core.

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Jim Haigh Joins SiteSwan Team

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July 2, 2018 - Jim Haigh dives into the SiteSwan lake as our new Product Evangelist, bringing a lifetime of championing entrepreneurs and Small Businesses (SMB’s) to our White Label Website Reseller Program. Jim will lead strategic initiatives to cultivate Reseller growth, harness partnerships and 3rd-party Integrations, and spread the word of SiteSwan opportunities across the digital landscape.

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Major New Feature Announcement: SiteSwan has Teamed Up with Stripe to Offer Hassle-Free Client Billing

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Jun 19, 2018 - We know that one of the biggest challenges in running your local web design firm is managing client billing and keeping track of past due payments. With SiteSwan’s new Client Billing feature and Stripe integration, SiteSwan resellers can easily charge their small business clients from the same dashboard they're already using to build and manage their websites. All it takes is 1 click to sync SiteSwan's website building platform to a Stripe account.

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SiteSwan Feature Releases for the 2nd Half of 2017

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Dec 13,2017 - We’re constantly improving the SiteSwan website building platform for our resellers by adding and enhancing features. We believe that for SiteSwan to remain the easiest, fastest way to build beautiful websites for small businesses, we have to continually innovate and evolve as a white label website builder.

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How to Price E-Commerce Websites and Profit

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Jun 20,2017 - Many small business owners say they want to do e-commerce. Of course they do! The prospect of boosting sales around the clock and offering products to people from around the world is very enticing.

And it’s easy for you to get caught up in this excitement too. As their web developer, you’d love to be able to brag about your website client who boosted business by 50% by working with you!

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How to Add Off-Site Links to Site Navigation

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Jun 8,2017 - Your site navigation is one of the very few things that stays constant from one page of your site to the next. It’s a visually reliable reference point for the user – something they can always come back to if they feel lost, want to see what’s next, or want to backtrack. It also serves as a sort of guide or roadmap of how to experience the website.

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Easily Add E-Commerce to any SiteSwan Website with our Shoprocket Integration

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May 20, 2017 - At SiteSwan, we’re all about making things quick and easy for you. The folks at Shoprocket happen to agree with that sentiment as well.

Everyone wants to sell something online, right? We all love the idea of people logging onto our site to purchase something while at home in our pajamas.

But building an e-commerce store is extremely difficult, tricky, time consuming, and expensive. That is, until now.

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What Every Small Business Needs for Effective Local Marketing

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April 16, 2017 - Small businesses, in general, have limited budgets. And, generally speaking, most small business owners have clients who are almost all within a very short driving (or walking) distance from them. Since they’re not likely to get customers from far away, their options for marketing their business are fewer than the larger businesses you see advertising on TV.

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Enhance Coupons by Adding Images, Colors, and More

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Mar 7,2017 - Coupons are the lifeblood for many small businesses. According to a report by Inmar, 2.9 billion coupons were redeemed in the U.S. in 2013. For many shoppers, buying decisions are influenced by money-saving coupons that they find on small business websites.

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We Updated Our Website Content Editor

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Feb 27,2017 - Your Content Editor just got a lot prettier.

Surprise! Next time you log into one of your SiteSwan sites, you’re going to see a much more beautiful content creation interface. It’s been totally redesigned from the ground up to make you and your clients feel more up-to-date.

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Hide Site Credit From Your Client Websites

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Feb 21,2017 - Giving yourself credit on the bottom of every customer site is an EXCELLENT way generate referral leads. People see the awesome work you do, they click your name to find out who did it, they see your site, and then they contact you to do their website. Win!

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