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5 Tips to Make Your Business Website User-Friendly
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When creating a website for your business, there are certain things to keep in mind from a design perspective that can make or break your site. Even if you do not plan to spend a fortune on your site, paying attention to each of these items you will ensure that the final product is something of which you can be proud.
Here are 5 tips for designing your business website, even on a budget:
Tip #1: Make sure your Web site loads in 5 seconds or less: Have you ever tried to view a Web site only to find that it takes 10 or 20 seconds to come up on your screen? Unless it has been recommended by a friend or you have some other burning desire to visit the site, you probably likely gave up and moved on. The first 5 seconds is very important in terms of the attention span of your visitor. During that period, you need your site to load and for the visitor to be able to “get” what your site is about. If it takes longer than this, your visitors will run out of patience and leave. Tip: if you want to show off a long flash presentation, try featuring it on a page other than the home page.
Tip #2: Limit the menu bar to 5 options: Your Web site needs to be singular in purpose and focused in appearance. If your site is trying to be all things to all people, it will end up being of value to almost nobody. The simplicity and focus of your site design is reflected in your navigation and symbolized on your home page by your menu options. If you believe your site requires more than five menu options, make some of them sub-menus that are available only after the user selects one of the five main options.
Tip #3: Make clearly visible a call to action: Ever shopped at an IKEA? Their stores have a non-traditional layout that allows you to look around freely and yet literally leads you from one section to another, right on through to the multiple cash registers and food goodies waiting for you at the end of your path. Let this serve as a model for how to set up your Web site: on every page, you need to make it abundantly clear to your site visitors just exactly what it is you want them to do. Do you want them to contact you? Order your product or service? Add a comment to your Web site? Whatever it is, make this call to action very easy to spot both textually and graphically from anywhere on the site.
Tip #4: Provide free and clear access to additional help options: You do not want to lose sales (or visits, or whatever your goal for your visitors maybe be) just because you failed to give someone the chance to ask a question. Just as with your call to action, make it clear to visitors that no matter where they are on your site they can easily locate help via phone, e-mail, live chat, call back, user forum, or knowledge database. Hint: present the various options in a prioritized manner depending upon anticipated user needs.
Tip #5: Show consistency among other design elements: The look-and-feel of your site as a whole is really just a combination of all of its individual components. Pay close attention to every detailed component of your new site. Use appropriate colors and graphics, pay attention to font size, make sure your messaging is readable and makes sense, and make sure images look crisp and appealing. Items that you think are minor might form the basis for whether someone chooses to stay on your site or find that of a competitor.
Whether you are designing your own site or hiring a professional designer, pay attention to these items and you will have a winning site for your business.
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The Impact of Web Design on Your Online Success
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SEO web design is a concept which emphasizes great architectural design principles based on how the search engines determine relevance and site information. The design should be able to give out the information that the user is seeking and at the same time be easily navigable. This is part of search engine optimization because the SEO web design should also be able to satisfy robotic crawlers and spiders in their quest for information regarding the website and other data.
SEO Web Design and Site Optimization:
Search engine optimization is more than just a trend nowadays. It is used and applied by almost all sites on the internet that aim to make money and reach online popularity. Among the many strategies of optimizing a web site, SEO web design is one of the topmost priorities.
The impact of the design of the site on search engine robotic crawlers or spiders can help raise the ranking of the site. This is where SEO web design comes in. There are many ways to make the web site more attractive to robotic visitors and human visitors alike. Actually, spiders and crawlers from search engines do not mind the overall aesthetic value of the site. All these robotic crawlers need is the information it can get from the site. The tricky part is how to put relevant information in the site in order for the crawlers to properly index the site due to its relevance. SEO companies who specialize in optimizing web sites must also know how to put a site in front of others in order to bring it to the attention of the Internet users. The search optimizers who will handle your site must be able to know the right strategies to place the web site ahead of others in its field through accepted methods of optimization.
SEO web design is a competitive area where web designers, or what I prefer to call website architects, work hard to come up with ideas and designs that are aesthetically appealing and relevant at the same time. There has to be consideration for ease of getting around the website, being appealing to a wide range of visitors and finding the right place for the website. Making a a basic, visually appealing site is easy with the many technologic advances available today, the problem with these advances are that they are sometimes quite tricky to use thus making your website difficult to navigate in. SEO web design should be easy to use and friendly to both human and robotic browsers.
Easy navigational access can be done by making the pages of the site easy to navigate to and having easy to understand and use button or labels to click on. The pictures and images on your SEO web design should be just the right size and scale to enable users to see them promptly after clicking instead of taking a very long time to download. Waiting for images and other graphics to load can be off putting for most visitors and will eventually lead them to another site which is more optimized and easy to view. Even spiders and crawlers will give up on a site which is not easy to navigate and get into.
The overall appeal of the SEO web design should not only be focused mainly on the niche that it is targeted on but also for Internet users who might have stumbled onto the site. SEO web design should have a universal appeal even for the most specialized type of sites on the Internet. Some webmasters or website owners could opt for specialized SEO web designs and these can also be done with the targeted audience in mind. It will also benefit the site if it is indexed as it should be. You might want to have a specific SEO web design which is built around the entire concept of your site and this can add to the ranking if you are quite specific with what you aim to sell or market. If you are marketing a specific product or information, SEO experts can focus on this product or information and build the SEO web design around it.
Another aspect of SEO web design that needs to be considered is what your competition is doing. The saying, know your enemy is the key here. You do not want to have the same boring marketing strategies as the competition. Why? Because it is a good idea to keep abreast with what they are doing and how well they are doing in this field. There are many site optimization tools that can help analyze and determine what is needed for the site. Hence, in regard to SEO web design process, content is one of the prime needs and tools of making the site rank high during searches. Finding out or identifying the right keywords to integrate into the site can be crucial in making the site among the top ranking ones. Keyword search tools and having keyword rich content and titles can help to optimize a site efficiently.
SEO web design experts should also bear in mind that there are web strategies that may be unacceptable for search engines. Using these underhand or black hat tricks to perpetuate a site in rank can cause the search engines to ban the site and also the SEO web design company that did the search engine optimization work for it no matter how well the SEO web design is.
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How to Choose a Web Design Company
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On the Internet today, there are many people who call themselves web designers and web design companies. Some people do it for fun, as a hobby or part-time. Web designers that design full-time are the way to go. Someone who does web design in their part-time tends not to take it as seriously as someone who does it for a living. There are also people who do web design, who have no formal training. Make sure your web designer has some formal training from a recognized school. People who are self taught, although I applaud them for doing it, have relied on the Internet for all their information, and as you know information on the Internet can be inaccurate.
Relevant Experience
The web design company you choose for your project should have relevant experience. If you would like them to design a e-commerce website, it is best to choose a web designer who has e-commerce websites in their portfolio. Your web design company should be ready to submit a proposal for your website project along with a contract. Beware of companies who don’t give you a formal contract. The contract should outline exactly what the web designer will do and how long it will take, the price, and what you have agreed to supply. A formal contract is the best way to avoid disagreements between the web designer and you. Make sure your contract outlines every possible problem that can happen.
Different types of websites
There are different types of websites such as: static HTML (brochure type), e-commerce (with a shopping cart), database, and a website with your own content management system. All of these must come into perspective when you are looking for a web design company. Your best bet when choosing a web design company is to have a face to face meeting when discussing what it is you would like to have your website look like, also some sketches and some addresses of websites that you like. This gives the web design company the chance to fully understand what you are looking for and a better chance to give you an accurate proposal.
Things to take into consideration
Does the web design company have an update package? You must know that after your website has been created, from time to time you will require updates. Maybe they will be small maybe not. If the web design company you are choosing does not have an update package, you should inquire about the price of updates after the initial design. You should take the price of updates into consideration before you begin the design process. Make sure the web design company or web designer you choose sets realistic goals for the timeline. Usually if it sounds too good to be true then it is.
You would also have to consider guarantees. Does your potential web design company offer a guarantee? Most web design companies do not. So when you find one who does, you can know that they feel very confident in their capabilities. Another thing to consider is: Does the web design company display a phone number that they can be contacted at. Sometimes as a client you would like to speak with someone, not just get a reply to an e-mail the next day.
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Know This Before You Start a Website Design
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.27.3″ custom_padding=”0px||0px|||”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.27.3″ custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.27.3″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.4.5″ hover_enabled=”0″]Web design for an online business is serious business. No matter how important and unique your product or service is, what keeps a customer on a website is the web design, what makes customers buy is the ease of the process.
Probably you already know that designing a business website is not like designing a personal website that only your friends and family will see. Since your target from a business website is customers who are going to pay you money, your web design for an online business must be appealing and convincing that you are worth paying.
Web design for an online business says a lot about the business and its owners. Its important to present a professional image; otherwise you will end up handing customers to your competitors even if you have better products and services.
Amateurish web design shines a bad light on a professional business. If your web design looks amateurish, people will think youre an amateur. Of course, that may be an inaccurate assumption, but it is the reality of the way things are. A professional image makes people more comfortable, and more likely to use your product or service.
Good web design includes pages that are easy to navigate, and that are pleasing to the eye. Think of a few of your favorite websites, visit them and browse them thoroughly. Take notes of why you like them. Keep the list handy when youre ready to design your own business website. Also keep in mind why visitors will be visiting your site.
In designing a business web site you will have to think like a customer. If this does not make sense to you, browse similar business websites and consider the things that are keeping you on the website for a longer time. Also take notes about the things that are encouraging you to leave the website you are visiting and to look for your required service or product elsewhere. Your target should be to keep your customer at your website the longest time for a simple reason, if this visit to your site did not translate into a sale, his comfortable stay will introduce him to other products that will be in the back of his mind and will come back to get it when he needs it.
A handy peace of information to keep in mind is that websites attract visitors because theyre seeking information. Maybe they want to purchase an item or service that you offer, so do not spare any effort to give a detailed, nicely arranged and easy accessible information about every product or service that you offer. Good web design insures that visitors will have an easy time finding the information they need. You only have a split of a second to retain visitors, so make the most of that time.
The main page should get to the point. Flash intro pages look nice, and show that youre current on technology. But Flash intro pages annoy many people, and cause them to click away from your site without going further. If you must have a Flash intro, at least include the option to skip it. Other than that, when you are in the phase of search engine optimization, you are going to have a hard time optimizing flash websites.
Furthermore, good web design also takes into account some people use dial-up services. Successful web design means the page is available to everyone, not just those with broadband or cable connections. If possible, keep graphics and special effects to a minimum. Overloading a page with too many extras looks amateurish, and makes the page load slowly.
Successful web design can make or break your business. Create a site that is appealing and easy to navigate, and your visitors will be glad they found it, happy to revisit and recommend.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]