Does this sound familiar: I had a web design done about a year ago and now I am learning that there are a lot questions I should have asked my designer. During the design process, SEO was only mentioned in passing, and keywords never came up. Since I’ve been disappointed in the performance of my website, I’ve done a lot of reading and now realize that my site needs help if it is ever going to get a high rank on search engine results pages. I am wondering if I need to redesign my site or if there is some way to take care of SEO now, after the fact, other than some kind of pay per click solution.
I hear the same quotes over and over again and if this sounds like you, then call me for a free chat and I’ll explani the whole facebook-mania to you in 5 minutes. It’s much easier than you think! Read:
I am wondering about social sites like Facebook and Twitter with regard to web design. I have a Facebook page but rarely visit it. Too busy! Plus, I find them more than a little silly. Everyone says social marketing is a great tool for marketing my products, but I just don’t get it. It seems so time consuming, with little guarantee of anything other than time wasted on my part. I wish there were some way to build the so-called power of social marketing into my website design. Is this same as using SEO to make my website work for me or is it different?
Could someone explain to me the advantages of a ready made site in web design ? I don’t want to settle for something that looks shoddy or doesn’t work properly—but I have been put off by the costs involved with so-called custom web designs. I am keen to get going in the Internet—should have done it five years ago—but I am put off not only by the costs but by what seems to be the enormous job of getting and maintaining a good rank on search engine pages. I am wondering whether a template design can really be as good as a bespoke design at only a fraction of the cost. Contact Ron on 0488529466 of fill in the contact form for a quick website design quote on: http://www.webdesignspecialist.com.au/
I tried an internet business a few years ago and it was a total flop, mainly because of my web design. I later learned it was because I hadn’t done my homework and didn’t realize how important it is to have a simple site that is properly optimized for search engine results. Traffic to my site was practically zero. Previously, I got carried away by the way my site looked and was preoccupied with having exciting flash elements. I’m wiser now and ready to work with a web designer who can build a site that will be a proper business development tool for my new venture. Contact Ron on 0488529466 of fill in the contact form for a quick web design quote on: webdesignspecialist.com.au
remember to not only to work your business, but expand it at the same time – by Outsourcing.
Many online business owners begin with nothing. They have to do it all by themself — the preparation of a product, the development of a web marketing strategy, the actual building of the site to cater to their product’s advertising requirements. When their business grows with time, they may realize that their simple “selfmade” web-site might not be sufficient to cover everything, and they will have to take a day or two away to just dedicate that to the web site expansion.
Sounds familiar? Chances are, you might be someone who started everything without money too, thus you’re quite suspicious when it comes to giving your hard earned dollars in exchange for a thing that you could have undertaken on your own. However, there is a lot more to employing a designer than simply completing a job that you dont want to do.
When you use a web designer to do your work for you, you are doing more than simply handing over the ‘dirty work” to someone else. Actually, by paying a little cash, it is possible to let the web designer worry about the tiny annoyances that constantly evade the main picture and only come up when you happen to be halfway through the project. Doing this, you’ll be more tightly focused and have more hours to devote to your actual small business strategy.
Meanwhile, provided the designers you use are professionals they will be very good at what they do. Consequently by outsourcing your web site design duties to them, you will not need to fret when difficulties appear since you can always get them to correct it for you. Once more, they should be able to pin point the issue and repair it faster than you probably can.
Additionally, the task you pay for will turn out much more professional when compared with what you are able achieve because the designers have been doing it a bit longer than you have. After all, they do website design for a living so they have to be good!
And so, remember to not only to work your business, but expand it at the same time – by Outsourcing.
There can be no argument about the importance of design in attracting Internet users to a particular web site. No one would bother to explore the contents of a site if it does not contain eye-catching graphics that can please the visual sense of the users. With so many kinds of web sites existing online, it is extremely challenging to attract users and keep them interested in the site.
There can be no argument about the importance of design in attracting Internet users to a particular web site. No one would bother to explore the contents of a site if it does not contain eye-catching graphics that can please the visual sense of the users. With so many kinds of web sites existing online, it is extremely challenging to attract users and keep them interested in the site.
But a web site developer does not simply apply graphics freely on a site. Graphics should be used in the correct manner, or else, users might get turned off because the graphics featured just overwhelmed or confused them.
While it is true that attractive design is important for reasons that need not be explained, the choice of design must be carefully considered against the fulfilling the needs of users. When done successfully, it could be safely said that the web site has achieved its goals.
Graphics used in the Internet is inextricably linked to multimedia. Multimedia is a combination of graphics, text, sound, and animation to express a message to users. The multimedia features that will be incorporated to a web site should be dependent on the content. In general, multimedia and graphics should serve as supports to content, and should have precise, instructional purpose.
According to research, animated images can facilitate the transfer of learning in a positive way if it is utilized to show a vital part of the concept that is being illustrated. On the other hand, animation can serve as a barrier to user recall and performance.
Here are the guidelines in incorporating graphics to web sites:
1. Justify the usage of the graphics The most obvious problem that can be seen on web pages is the over-usage of graphics. The main downside of this is that complicated, unnecessary graphics can take a long time to download, and this, of course, will not sit well with users. The graphics to be applied should support the transfer of data and should also be in relation to the accompanying text.
2. The difference between graphics with text-redundant data and those containing information that is non-redundant is that the former facilitates and ushers in the learning process, while the latter does not either help or slow down learning.
3. Consistency should be a priority in graphic design
4. Web pages should be marked up so that text will be downloaded before the graphics. In this way, the users will know immediately if the page has the information that they are looking for, and if not, they will be able to save precious waiting time knowing that they do not need that certain page.
5. The loading of graphics should be controlled as such that loading will commence from top to bottom, and the users scrolling down the page will encounter said graphics.
6. The downloading of pages should be fast in order to save users waiting time, and in order to reduce the chances that they will get frustrated that they will abandon plans to download. Here are several ways to achieve fast download periods:
-Keep the physical size of the graphics to a minimum -Images should be combined in order to minimize the number of server connections. Remember, the more connections that exists, the slower the download time will be -Decrease image resolution -Limit the colors that will be used for the images -Limit the use of animation
Animation is very much a part of web graphic design. The primary difference between web text and graphics and contents that are print-based is the dynamics. Moving displays attract the attention of users as long as the frequency of the display is regulated. Too much animation display can irritate and distract users. An animation that is perpetually moving can destroy the readable quality of the web page.
The usage of blinking texts should be avoided. It has long been regarded as an overused feature and the latest browsers no longer support it.
In designing a web site, there always exists a conflict between the desire to have total control over the appearance of a page and the need to permit users to establish their own preferences. The general appearance of the page should be made by the designer, but there are certain elements that users should have control over, such as color and text background, and the option whether to display graphics or not.
It takes a considerable amount of effort to establish and maintain the attractiveness and efficiency of a web site. If the guidelines above will be followed, all the efforts of web designers will bear desirable results. They only have to remember that the benefit of the users will always be the basis for everything.
Your website is like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practice good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.
Your website is like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practice good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.
1. Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.
2. Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.
3. Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into separate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.
4. Make sure the site is cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.
5. Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.
6. Use CSS to style your page content because they save a lot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.
There are many factors that affect the usability of a web site. To make sites noticeable to users, site owners must make use of attractive design and functional content. The usage of fonts is one of the factors that can draw or veer away visitors to a web site. Good fonts are important because it has an effect on how fast users can read whatever content that is present on the computer screen.
There are many factors that affect the usability of a web site. To make sites noticeable to users, site owners must make use of attractive design and functional content. The usage of fonts is one of the factors that can draw or veer away visitors to a web site. Good fonts are important because it has an effect on how fast users can read whatever content that is present on the computer screen.
Fonts are utilized to make the majority of the web page elements, such as navigation bars, buttons, links, and menus. It is the text that will express most of the web site’s content.
At present, the fonts that are commonly used in the Internet are Times New Roman, a serif font, and the Arial, a sans serif font. The primary edge of serif fonts is that it is more comfortable to read it on paper, because serifs help individualize each letter. However, this advantage can be rendered useless when the fonts are viewed on computer screens, since factors such as screen resolution can affect the clarity of texts.
So how do fonts influence the overall usability and legibility of a web site?
There are two major categories of font faces:
1, Serif These are fonts that contain small appendages in the upper and lower part of a letter. Examples are Times New Roman, Century, Bookman and Courier. These are the choice faces to be used for large quantities of text.
2. Sans-serif These fonts have only primary line strokes, and possess a simpler shape. Examples of these fonts are Futura, Helvetica, and Arial. They are usually utilized for short phrases.
Font style pertains to the usage of elements such as italics, underlining, and boldfaces to give better emphasis to the contents of a page. It is not advised to utilize underlining on web pages, since most of the users are used to associate underlinings with links. Boldfaces should be used in a strategic way. Too much usage of boldfaces can be distracting from the content, since they are extremely visible. Since italics are not very legible on the screen, they should be used infrequently, just enough to provide emphasis and definition to terms.
Avoid using absolute font sizes. Doing so may hinder users the ability to adjust the sizes of the text to go along with the specifics of display devices that they are using. It is recommended to let users manipulate the size of the texts, especially if one plans to keep the web pages short.
Choosing font colors should be done with care, it should maximize the legibility of the text in contrast to the background of the page while setting it apart from colors used for links. For light backgrounds, one should used fonts in black, dark green, dark brown, and dark blue. If the background is dark, fonts in white, pale green, and pale orange should be used. If possible, use only one or two font colors in a page, excluding the colors for the link pages.
There are images that look like fonts. Avoid using them. There are several reasons why one should not utilize .jpg or .gif images to acquire special effects. First, images takes a long time to download, and when it appears, the quality is not the same as the text produced by the by browsers. Second, there usually is a problem when resizing images. Third, these images cannot be recognized by voice-enabled browsers.
It is said that Sans serif fonts should be used for standard and top-of-the-line web site designs, specifically the Arial and the Verdana. It is recommended to use the same font throughout a page, but headline sizes can be added and the subheadings can be written in bold form to prevent monotony. Again, it is preferable to give users the ability to control the size of the texts, since some of the users can be visually-challenged.
Some studies show that fonts that are tinier than 10-point gets slower reaction from users. It is advisable to use fonts that are at least 12 or 14-point in size when it comes to people over the age of 65.
The quality of a well-designed web site is that it can be accessed and used by people from all walks of life. Web sites should be designed to suit everyone who will be able to visit them.
We know people dont read long sales letters from start to finish…
I just read a very post from Robert Puddy. I am adding a link to it below as it is the best answer I have seen to the age old question of long copy vs short copy. Robert seems to have it down to exactly what I do when confronted by a long sales letter; so I hope it applies to the majority of other people too. Making it very useful data
He says (quote)
We know people dont read long sales letters from start to finish…
Here is what they do (and why a good long sales letter works)
First they scan the headline and the first paragraph (so this should be your strongest reason for buying) .
The most important thing in a web design project is not its navigation, its domain name, or even what it says. It is this ..
Hi and welcome to the very last post relating to my eBook “Web Designer Secrets” – I hope you have found them useful. If you haven’t go a copy of the Ebook yet (!) you can download a copy free by clicking on the image to the right.
The most important factor in a web design project
As a web designer I deal with the nuts and bolts of the website. The layout, the structure , the coding and the graphics and getting it raked well in the search engines.
These are all important. But there is a more important thing that need to be worked on first, and not by me. By you. the business owner.
The most important thing in a web design project is not its navigation, its domain name, or even what it says.
It is purpose. Is there a clear purpose and reason behind the website?
Or put it another way- what is it supposed to do or achieve?
Having a goal makes everything else align and flow
Having an end-goal in mind for your website will serve to guide and focus all other efforts relating to the site. From the navigation, to the design and what it says. These will all align well and work together best if there is a clearly visualised and named product for the website as a whole.
Now you don’t need to be all esoteric or mystical about it though. In fact the more precise and practical you are the better it is.
Given that your website is to be a business tool it is most probablyyou will want it to either
1. Increase number of inquiries for your services or products or 2. Sell more services and products directly or 3. Keep current customers informed to improve customer relations
Now those are very generalised and would be more specifically defined for your business. But you get the idea…
Build towards achieving the expected end result and save time and money
Once you have the goal – you should build your website (or have it built) with that goal in mind
Doing this help you decide what you do and what you don’t need. It also tells you whether you need a checkout facility/ shopping cart site (an ecommerce website) or simply an information site with a contact form (what I call a small business website) . It tells you whether you need state-of-the-art graphics, interactive flash animations or simply a page of informative text.
It helps you focus on the important issues and discard the unimportant
Example from a web designer (me) point of view
As a web designer I always strive to provide my customers with a website that suits their specifications.
Sometimes these specifications need a bit of adjusting! By this I mean they ask for things that will be detrimental to their sites performance
A few months ago I was paid a deposit to build a new small business website to replace a very old HTML site that wasn’t optimized and wasn’t ranking well as a result. It had many broken links and used frames. In other words it was a mess!!
I proposed a fast loading site build on a content management system ( so the owner could update it when she wanted) and a much faster / lighter image gallery placed deeper in the site so as not to impact on the ranking as much. I also proposed full optimisation and back-link building.
In other words I proposed a site that would load well, was easy to navigate which would ranking well in the search engines. That is what she asked for after all!
BUT… the as soon as we started the customer said she also wanted a flash intro page with a 1-2 minute flash animation. Plsu she wanted the “home page” to contain only images (no text) and she also proposed a complex navigation and an unusual font that few browsers support.
I couldn’t convince her that doing these things would lose her 25% of her customers before they even got to the home page; would massively impact on the site load time; and would severely impede any search engine optimisation. Believe me I tried.
Eventually I gave her the deposit back and told her I couldn’t help her. The site she asked for would not meet the goal she had set.
Maybe in my earlier days I would have built what was asked for. But not now. I know what she was insisting on would not work. It would not be much better than the site she was replacing in actual fact. And I know that customer would also blame me for this. And to a degree she would be right to do so.
So the moral to the story is know what you want the site to do, have an idea of what is required for this to happen and be willing to be guided by someone who knows what they are talking about.
Example from a customers point of view
When my daughter got married my wife – who is not normally much for the internet – spent many hours surfing for mother-of-the-bride outfits and wedding related items.
This is what she said to me – and these comments are so typical of your everyday internet user.
She told me that if a site took too long to load she’d leave and go elsewhere. If she couldn’t easily see how to get to the information she wanted she would leave and go elsewhere. If the site didn’t have the data she needed to know (eg price, locations, how to order) she would leave and go elsewhere
Get the point?
Build your site to suit your customer and your strategy (goal). Not your ego.
Saving Money and Time
If you do this you’ll find your development costs will probably go down!! And so will the costs.
You’ll be working to make the site as SIMPLE as possible for your customers.
And your conversions and sales (or inquiries) will be good as a result
And interestingly enough google will probably like your site better as well.
In my eBook I suggest a simple way to build a website based on wordpress for very little cost. For some people this will suit their purpose just fine. For others it wont.
For those who need something more don’t despair. Web design doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t need to cost tens of thousands of dollars. A few thousand at the most I’d say!! That’s all I charge – and often much less. And I must say my sites work pretty well on the whole.
So here’s an unashamed plug for me
If you really want to know how much it will cost to get a website built then get a free web design quote from me.
And by all means shop around as well if you wish.
I know my prices are very competitive but not as low as some.
However I bring with me a wealth of experience I am happy to share with my customers and a knowledge base broader than just how to code a website I know how to make a website work as a business tool.
Some of this information you will find in my eBook “Web Designer Secrets”, some you’ll find here in my blog and some of which is still in my head
