Design Articles
A collection of our Web design articles.
Web design "best practices" for a successful site presentation
Web Site Basics
Launching a Web presence may be intimidating to beginners, but can be accomplished with minimum inconvenience and expense by doing everything in a step-by-step process.
Let's get straight to the point...
Building a professional, attractive website takes a lot of thought and hard work.
For most small businesses venturing into a Web presence for the first time, their first question is: “How do I start?”
We've prepared this article to help you work comfortably through the complete process.
Just by taking the time to read this guide, you’re already heading in the right direction. We’re confident you’ll find that investing in a professionally designed website is one of the smartest and most cost-effective decisions you can make for your business growth.
Planning
Planning your site involves creating the blueprint for the site
Where to Host it
What it is supposed to accomplish, and how it will look. The choice of server will normally be based on the amount of storage space you will need, the type of web site design you use and the amount of web traffic you expect to have.
Define your goals and objectives for the site
Think in terms of action verbs here: what do you want your site to do for new and existing customers, as well as other visitors? What services (such as e-commerce or scheduling) or interactions (such as forms or web logs) do you want to include? It helps to take a look at other web sites that offer the same products or services as yours to see what they did. Make a future reference list of thinge you liked and disliked about their sites and organize.
Determine the look and feel of the site
Your site should reflect your other marketing materials, including colors, logos, layout, writing style, and even the style of type you use. The more consistent, the better, because people remember visually. Colors, logos, and the overall look and feel of your marketing materials are important and should be professional.
When thinking about the look of your website, do your homework
First, spend some time thinking about how you want to be thought of by your customers and prospects. This decision will affect all of your choices. No matter what you choose, create a brand that will appeal to your audience.
Brainstorm ideas for a website address.
Your company’s online presence begins with your website address, which can also be used in your e-mail addresses. Most importantly, your website address should reflect the name of your business, like DataStreamSolutions.com. However, sometimes the website address you really want is already taken and creativity comes into play. Whatever name you choose, make sure it’s easy to remember and easy to spell.
Choose an experienced website designer and host you can trust
.Your website partner should be an expert in design and technology, so that you don’t have to be. After all, you have a business to run! Also, make sure the company you choose is established and reputable - don’t be afraid to ask for client references and samples of sites they’ve created.
Just as importantly, be sure it provides you with a reasonable way to update your site after it’s published. You shouldn’t be charged a large fee every time you need to update your site; in fact, you should be given the ability to do at least some simple updating yourself. Your website creator will be your partner for a long time, so do your homework before signing someone on. Saving money now by having a neighbor or family member build your site could cost you big down the road if this person loses interest in your project!
Creation
As you create your site, make sure it’s attractive, readable, efficient, and easy to navigate. Whether you create a site yourself or have someone do it for you, keep the following best practices in mind:
Use an attractive, professional-looking design.
Your site reflects directly on your business. Your Web site should represent the same concept of a real store front. Imagine your customers walking through your store. The cleaner and more organized your store is, the higher the customer satisfaction will be. The same concept applies to your web site.
Include photos
Not only can photos help visitors see your products and services, but they can help reflect your company’s culture, your staff, and other aspects of your business. Photos can be warm and familiar, conservative and businesslike, or fun and trendy, depending on your desired image.
Avoid verbose text
People are turned off by text-heavy sites, so get to the point. Say all you need to say, but people stop reading when they get bored.
Use web-optimized, fast-loading pictures
In particular, avoid high-resolution pictures, which take a long time to load. Size the graphic large enough to get your point across, but remember that small pictures load much faster than large ones.
Avoid animated introduction pages
Pages created with Flash scripts (a Web-authoring tool that provides text animation effects) can be distracting, or even problematic to load. Design your home page so it can load as quickly as possible.
Use the 3-click rule
It should take visitors no more than three mouse button clicks to get to the information they’re looking for.
Don’t show a web traffic hit counter on your site
Counters tend to look unprofessional, so if you use them, make them invisible to the visitor. There are much better methods for you to check your Web site statistics.
Test your site on a dial-up line
There are still many people out there using dial-up connections, which are slower. By testing your site via dial-up, you will have an accurate measure of the time it takes for your pages to load.
Content
Content is the most important aspect of your website.
Regardless of your business, remember the goal of your website: to communicate who you are, what you offer, and how to contact you. If you effectively represent your company's goods or services, you will capture the attention of prospects and win their business. Spend some time thinking about exactly why you think someone should choose you over a competitor. Then, using the following list of elements as a framework, you can create an informative website.
Basic elements of a website
Home page
The home page is the entry point to the rest of the site. The goal of the home page is to describe your business and what you offer. Keep the description brief but informative-approximately 200 - 300 words is usually a good length. At a minimum, your home page provides a brief description of your company, how your business is unique or different from your competition and possibly a company history or information about key personnel.
Goods and services page(s)
This area provides a description of your company’s goods and services. It might also provide links to an online catalog where customers can buy products, make appointments or reservations, etc. Depending on your business and the breadth of what you offer, you may need more than one page to cover all the important details about your goods and services.
Contact Information
You’d be surprised at how many websites don’t provide the most basic information. Even if you have an online business only, include your address, phone number, at least one contact e-mail address, your hours of operation, and directions to your company (preferably a map).
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Not only can your website attract new business, but it can help you manage your existing business more efficiently. By including an FAQ section to handle commonly asked questions, you can save time and allow your customers to help themselves-whenever and wherever they happen to be online.
What’s New?
Keep your website visitors informed through your What’s New page. In addition to promoting special events or promotions, this page can also give you the opportunity to recognize outstanding employee performance, announce new company incentives, or congratulate specific achievements. Being your own Web editor comes in especially handy with this page, so you can make sure the information on this page is definitely “new” news.
Other Tips for Creating Good Content
Take the time to add extra touches
Personalize your business
Customers who do business with small companies prefer the sort of high-touch, personal relationship they don’t find with larger companies. Including personalized information about your business, such as your history, your commitment to the community, staff biographies, and so on, can create more of a bond with customers.
Show your successes
Websites are the primary resource for people investigating businesses. Your site can keep their attention - or even close the sale - through content such as a portfolio of past projects, testimonials from happy customers, certification logos from professional organizations, and lists of awards.
Cross-sell products and services
The next time you visit Amazon.com and buy a book, notice that the site suggests other books that you might like. This is a perfect example of cross-selling. You can cross-sell, too. For example, if you’re a CPA, break clients out of the “my CPA only does my taxes” mindset by introducing the other services you provide. If you own a hair salon, put information about the products you sell in the salon on your site, so people can read about them in advance and purchase when they come in to your store.
Empower customers by inviting interaction
As we’ve said before, many customers prefer to do business with smaller companies, in part because they feel they get more personal attention. Your website can be the ideal tool to help you keep in touch with your customers. For example, posting a feedback form or an online survey is an excellent way to allow customers to feel they are being heard.
After the site is fielded
Keep your content current
One of biggest mistakes that small businesses make on their websites is not keeping the site current. After all, if customers return and see that nothing’s changed since their last visit, why would they rush to come back? Since many details about your business don’t change very often, a great way to keep your site feeling fresh is to include recent news, customer success stories, interesting articles, etc. By updating your website at least once each week, you help maintain site traffic and keep your customers coming back for more!
Promote Your Site
OK, so you've built a terrific website - the design looks great and the content is right on target. Your next step is to make sure your prospects find it. Websites are passive, but website marketing is not. Here are three tried-and-true ways to create an effective promotional campaign that seeks out your best prospects and draws them to your site.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Statistics show that more than 85% of users find a website through a search engine. You should optimize your site for search engines and even consider a pay-per-click advertising campaign with a major search engine like Google or Yahoo! These programs are great for businesses of all sizes because you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad and visits your website. At a cost of about 15 cents to a dollar or two per click, you can choose as many keywords as you like and your listing will appear each time someone searches on them. By creating a search engine marketing program that guarantees traffic to your website, you’ll find that search engine marketing is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to promote your small business.
E-mail Marketing
E-mail marketing is an enormous opportunity for most businesses. Whether you send an e-mail newsletter to your customer database or rent opt-in e-mail lists to reach prospects, you’ll be rewarded with increased traffic and repeat visitors. The advantages of e-mail marketing over traditional direct mail include lower costs, reduced turnaround time, and the potential for higher response rates. Effective e-mail communications can drive site traffic and sales, enhance customer relationships, and increase brand awareness. While most e-mail campaigns produce an average return of one percent, some marketers report results as high as eight percent or more!
Offline Promotion
Put your website address on all business-related materials, including business cards, print advertisements, brochures, appointment-reminder postcards, invoices, coupons, flyers, and promotional materials.
Hopefully, this article will help you get on the right path. If you want more information about this subject, contact us by using the Web Form.