Top Questions Your Web Design Firm Should Be Asking You

Before any business owner develops a web site, they usually have something in mind regarding the esthetics, layout and overall budget they have for the project. While all of these are certainly an important part of building a web site, there are many more things to consider as well. If you are working with a professional web development firm, other questions need to be answered before you can have a site developed that will accurately represent your interests on the net.

One of the first questions they should be asking you is what your intentions are for the site. Are you selling products or services or giving out information? Is the site for entertainment purposes primarily or is it a business venture? If you are selling products or services, who constitutes your target demographic?

Once that has been established, a good web design firm will want to know how large you intend for the site to be. Will the site experience growth over time as pages are added for new products or services or as more content is added? Will the site require updating on a regular basis and if so, by whom?

Firms should offer you options on databases should you need one to securely store and retrieve information from customers, members and others who may visit the site. This is especially important for companies who rely on Internet orders for the bulk of their sales. Even for not-for-profits and other types of primarily informational web sites, however, visitor databases can be a necessity.

Last but certainly not least, a web design firm should inquire as to how you hope to bring traffic to your site. Will you be buying online advertising such as banner ads or pay per click? Will you be relying on search engine results to help your demographic find you? The latter will require some optimization efforts to make your site competitive for the keywords and phrases people might find you under. A good firm knows that even the most esthetically pleasing site in the world is ineffective if no one ever sees it.

Make sure the firm you hire is asking you the right questions and you will have a site you can be proud of that will serve its purpose well.

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Web Design vs. Print Design: How To Find The Middle Ground

There are a number of web designers who come up with print backgrounds for the sites that they make. These are most likely those who used to be print designers before joining the web design company they are part of now, or they are simply used to the control that is offered by print media. Remember though that print provides stability and permanence, and these two are not present in the Web. Realistically speaking though and speaking from experience if I may add, it is rather easy to forget this.
As you build your web page and have it tested on your browser, you somehow would like it to look exactly how you want it to. However, since your web design company requires you to test it in different browsers, you will see that they look different. As you move from one platform to the next, you will notice that there are slight but uncomfortable differences. This should be a good reminder that web design does not have the permanence and the stability that print does.
On the other hand, as the web designer, your web design company will most likely ask you to work with your customers during the web designing process. One of the most important things that you need to do is to explain to them the difference between the Web and print. Most clients would ask you to provide them your portfolios and web design plans. It is all too common for a web design company to receive customer complaints which stems from the fact that the website is not the exact representation of the print-out. To spare your web design company from this usual trouble, you have to learn how to properly work with your customers:
It is always good to have a portfolio printed out for clients to see. But bear in mind that it is not entirely a representation of your skills in web designs. When you do show them a portfolio, make sure that you also carefully explain to them the differences that they should expect on the final output web page. Make sure that you are upfront with them. If they set specifications for a graphical page and want specific layout, font and other web design elements, make sure that you also mention the possible trade-offs such as in the download speed and maintenance requirements. Lastly, it would be best to know what type of platform your customer will use. If you are a big fan of Netscape on the Mac, while your customer uses Internet Explorer version 7 for the Windows operating system, make sure that you bear this fact in mind when you come up with your designs. The page you come up with during the web design face may look very different on their platform.

So how then can you compromise the difference between web design and print? Well, you mostly need to rely on the web design techniques that you employ.

Here are some tips to help you through this difference:

• Know your audience very well. It is imperative that you know who the potential visitors of the site are and for whom the website is to be made for. Know your client's target audience and their characteristics or behaviors. If they are highly advanced users, they will most likely browse in UNIX or Linux on a 21-inch monitor. If they are rather more conservative, they are likely to use an Internet Explorer 7 on a 14 inch monitor. If your web design best suits your audience, your client will not come back running to your web design company to complain about the final site output.

• Test, test, and test again. You need to test your web design in each and every browser and operating system combination that you can possibly get both your hands on. You can use emulators if you are short of time and if you have no other choice, but nothing beats hands on experience through actual tests and runs.

• Never forget about resolution. Although browsers and operating systems are both important, there is one other factor that you need to consider in site web design. Keep in mind that if your client as well as their target audience will browse your final page on a browser than is smaller than you have designed on, there is a good possibility that they will be unpleasantly surprised. They might come back running to you, and your web design company might not appreciate that very much.

Using CSS can help you get precise layouts, but remember that your web design can never and will never be as precise as print. Remember this as implement the web design of your pages to spare you and your web design company a great deal of stress.

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Web Site Design – Focus, Focus, Focus

When creating a web site design, it is easy to fall into the trap of trying to be all things to all people. In reality, the key to a good web site design is focus.

We Don’t Need No Stink’n Distractions

It happens ever few weeks or so. I am sitting in front of the computer contemplating the meaning of life, i.e., why my numbers aren’t being picked in the California lottery. A frustrated person calls and wants to know why their site isn’t converting. Shaking myself from my revelry, I valiantly pull up their site and here is what I find.
A mess.

The front page is a mass of blinking this and floating that. In really nasty situations, there will be something like a banner telling me the weather conditions in some city. As if I cared. I don’t even look at the weather in San Diego. Okay, we don’t really have any, but that isn’t the point.

The point is a site must have focus to covert traffic into revenue. This is known as the rule of one. Every page of a site should focus on one subject, product, thing, picture or whatever is relevant to your site.If you have a page devoted to disco shirts with huge lapels, then everything on the page should focus on disco shirts with huge lapels. Typically, such a page would consists of brief text describing the disco shirts, thumbnails of the shirts and prices. The page should not include disco cds for sale. The cds should get their own page.

Don’t believe me?

Then let us kneel at the alter of Google. The Google Adsense program is designed to let you put Google advertisements on your site. To put the ads up, you simply copy and paste a script provided by Google. Once the site is republished, each page with script will show Google ads. If you look at each page, you will note the script produces different ads for different pages. Further, the ads on each page correspond to the subject matter on the page.

Why does Google do this?

Because ads that are relevant to the focus of the page will be clicked more than ads that are not. Put another way, the Adsense program is designed to focus on a single subject matter. The rule of one rears its head again.

Are you seeing a trend here?

If your site isn’t converting well, analyze the pages to see if you are focusing on one topic. If you have a weather banner on your site, there better be a very, very good reason.

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Web Design – You Are Replaceable And That Should Make You Happy

In the past there was always a fear that automation would replace (or displace) honest, hard-working citizens. While this may happen, there is reason to look at automation as an ally in online business.
If you were to conduct an online search you would likely find businesses that rely on personal contact, personal check and other hands on details as the only means of facilitating a sale.
I have encountered a few in recent days and this always has the feeling of being either ‘old school’, simply inefficient or a very small company. This always leads me to ask, “Why are they small?”

Beyond how customers may perceive this type of business it is important to note that from the standpoint of a business owner you may be spending more time working toward completing a sale than actually developing product.

By automating the process of sales you may find you have a more satisfied customer while eliminating a great deal of the personal headache you experience at making sure each customer is contacted personally.

This may include:

Web Design Automation: When you work to develop your online store it is important to choose a design option that will enable you to work as hands-free as possible in online sales.

Autoresponders – All this automated email delivery system to provide the most immediate contact with new and returning customers. This eliminates the need to develop an individual reply to each customer.

Forms – This can allow customers to provide a targeted response or question. It can aid in helping you understand their needs and in forming a reply (or developing a comprehensive FAQ section). This is another example of helping the customer without the need to baby-sit every online sale.

Automated Checkout – This may be your most valuable ally in automation. This can allow your customer to access an immediate sale. They don’t have to wait for you to receive their email and respond when they may be less interested, they can simply make the purchase and move on.

A cost-effective way to establish an online business with automation as your ally is through the use of template rich web builder software. This can allow you to make your site as automated as you need it to be at a cost that is much less than standard website development costs. The benefits of automation in website design really is an important part of both streamlining your business as well as allowing you to concentrate more fully on site development, marketing potential or product development.

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Web Design: A Three Second Impression

It was web design and function that held the most meaning to online visitors. Roger Park in a report based on those findings said, 70 percent of online shoppers consider web design as a key role and over 30 percent of online shoppers cited navigation, the checkout process, and product descriptions as critical site aspects that impacted their completion of online purchases.

Users cite lengthy registration requests as a primary reason they avoided certain online retailers. However, to explain how motivated online shoppers have become you need to understand that 77% of online users.

Information overload is a critical and consistent problem, and in this study we found that Web users were more likely to say that a site had too many links as opposed to too few links. More than 3/4th of the respondents indicated the professionalism of the site was a primary factor in moving forward with a purchase. If a site did not appear professional, the respondent typically moved on to another site.

As web users become more sophisticated so too should web designers. If you have difficulty in developing your own site an online site builder may provide the professionalism and consistency you need in site design. Consumers who made an online purchase in the past three months are more than 80% likely to make another purchase in the coming three months.

The demand for online shopping spurs a phenomenal growth pattern. Online shoppers are discovering the value of being able to shop from the comfort of home without commute time, line waiting and stores that don’t have the item they are seeking. The web user remains in the driver’s seat with the ability to click easily to, or away from, your site. The design function of your website is incredibly important in the midst of a growing throng of motivated shoppers.
“The top reason online consumers prefer to shop on the web is to avoid crowds, a reason cited by 38% of respondents.

Do not assume that simply because consumers are migrating toward cyber-shopping that you simply need to set up shop and hope for the best. Web design is becoming a primary source for decision-making among online consumers.

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