Posts Tagged ‘ Website Design ’

Your Small Business Website Design Roadmap

Saturday, February 7th, 2015

Tags: planning your website design, small business website design, Website Design
Posted in Website design tips |

Planning your small business website design With online sales continuously increasing each year, a website has become just as important for small businesses as a physical base of operations. In fact, during peak shopping times, some stores are seeing online sales even surpassing those seen in stores. Having an online presence is no longer enough – a small business needs to have a modern website with a great design. Fortunately, designing your business website is not nearly as difficult as people first think – it simply takes a bit of understanding about the various elements of a website as well as what is needed to encourage visitor engagement!

Planning Your Small Business Website Design

The planning begins with the first step – figuring out what you want on your website and what its purpose should be. From there you can then design an entire site around that purpose. Focusing solely on that purpose is essential because it ensures that users who come to the site know what it’s about and are clearly able to recognize the various elements of the site without being confused and overwhelmed. Below we have six various elements that are key to include in any web design for small business.

Purpose of the Site

The initial step for a small business website is to first determine the sole purpose of the site. Websites take many different shapes and forms depending on their purpose, so it’s critical to understand what you’re actually trying to accomplish before you end up halfway through the project and completely off track.

Should your purpose be to sell your businesses products online, you’ll need to create a site that’s e-commerce ready and appeals to customers in that respect. On the other hand, if you’re simply there to educate visitors about the services you provide and inspire them to contact you directly, then you will need to take a completely different approach to the site design.

Sitemap

Once you’ve got the purpose of the website firmly in mind, it’s time to begin mapping out the site itself. Much like a floor plan in a physical store, it’s essential to decide what goes where for a website. This pre-planning will help ensure continuity throughout your site and enable you to then begin going through each piece and filling it in with stunning content that is engaging and visually appealing.

Visual Appeal

The very first impression a user has of your website will be a lasting one and could make or break a sale in less than a second. If a user first enters your website and finds it bland or far too busy, they will likely immediately leave leading to a potential customer lost to your competitors. This is why any business website design first begins with creating a stunning and professional looking website with a non-obtrusive background, plenty of high quality and professional photos (especially of products and services), and an overall visually appealing color scheme that exudes trust and professionalism.

User Friendly Navigation

Once a user is on a site, they need to be able to effectively navigate through the content. Having intuitive menus will help guide a visitor around your site and ensure they are able to view your products, contact your business, or inquire about services easily. Ensure navigational menus are uncluttered and simple to use. Having breadcrumbs at the top also allows users to easily back out to a previous section with ease.

Engaging and Relevant Content

While the overall aesthetic appeal of the site and intuitiveness of the navigation play a large role in how a visitor will interact on the site, the most effective way to get a visitor to purchase your product or service is through your content. Having relevant content that is specifically tailored to your target audience is essential. This engaging content will ensure that they are able to read about your products, services, and business while instilling a sense of trust in your business. This sense of trust is not only crucial for a website to generate interest in a visitor, but it essential for the visitor to even consider a purchase!

Simple Contact Information

No one likes to be left searching for something, least of all when they have an urgent question about a product or service. As a small business, it is your job to ensure that your customers can immediately contact you with their questions and comments. One way of doing this is to put all of your business contact information on a “Contact Us” page. However, many small businesses are finding that a chat or call option directly on the site has led to far more conversions!

Tell us what you think

When it comes to designing a website, there are many different aspects that need to be taken into consideration. Additionally, since each business is different, a website needs to be specifically tailored to suit the needs of the targeted audience. While we’ve provided a general overview of the aspects for a small business website, we’d love to know what you think!

Have some suggestions about how to make a business website more visually appealing or easy to navigate? Or perhaps you can suggest some mobile optimization tips for other business owners? Let us know!

Essential Mobile Web Design Tips You Cannot Afford To Miss

Tuesday, November 25th, 2014

Tags: Mobile Marketing, Website Design
Posted in Mobile Marketing |

Mobile web design tips for your small business
Many desktop sites can be accessed through a mobile phone. However, this does not automatically make them mobile friendly. Mobile sites are tailored for smaller displays on smartphones. This ensures the needs of your mobile customers are taken care of. Your business will achieve greater conversions and customer engagement as a result.

50% of all people access the internet through a mobile device. This means that half of all your potential conversions will be lost if your content is not easily viewed on mobile devices. The best way of checking whether your site is mobile friendly, is to access it via a smartphone and assess the following qualities:

Viewable content

Content on a mobile friendly site should be viewable, without the need for pinching and zooming. This can be done by resizing the content to fit smaller screens. You should particularly avoid using Flash based video. Most smartphones do not support this format, thereby denying your customers access to content.

Fast loading

Customers hate slow loading pages, and would rather find another alternative. Your website is slowed considerably by flash based video content and large images. Resize images and compress them to a much smaller file size instead. Furthermore, your site should be set to automatically resize images, when accessed via a mobile device. Video and animations should be avoided as much as possible. Slower data connections on mobile devices will make this type of content difficult to access.

Easy to read information

It is important to remember that most mobile users will be reading your content on the go. Therefore, include contact information like addresses, maps, and telephone numbers that may be of use to people on the move. Additionally, phone numbers should be actionable through a click-to-call functionality.

Many of your customers may also be accessing the site in poor light conditions. For this reason, your content should be easy to read and digest. Avoid detailed descriptions of your business or services, and focus on enticing one-liners instead. These deliver more conversions than intricate information that is hard to understand. You should also ensure images do not overcrowd the screen.

Great navigation

The smaller screen and lack of a mouse or keyboard creates navigation challenges on a mobile phone. Your customers will be mostly limited to single thumb navigation and typing. Your mobile site should therefore be designed so that larger fingers can easily click on links. This can be done through large centered buttons to minimize unintended clicks. A well displayed home page icon and back buttons will help customers navigate easily around the site. Poor navigation contributes to a frustrating experience for customers on your site.

Easy usability

Links, buttons, and gestures such as pinch, zoom, and scroll, should work properly. Data entry tools like lists, scroll menus, and check boxes should also be available. It will make filling forms easier. This gives your customers a better experience on your site, increasing your conversions.

Accessing your own site on a smartphone gives you an opportunity to experience it as any customer would. If you were not satisfied with the experience, and would like to make your site more mobile friendly, please contact us.

What Exactly Is Search Engine Optimization and Why Is it So Vital to Your Online Business?

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Tags: Search Engine Optimization, Website Design
Posted in Search engine optimization (SEO), Web Site Design |

According to Wikipedia, search engine optimization (SEO) “is the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the ‘natural’ or unpaid (organic or algorithmic) search results.

What this basically means is that SEO is the preferred, natural method for driving traffic to your web site. While there are other methods in which a site owner can bring traffic to her site (some of which are unethical and can result in your site being penalized by search engines like Google) SEO is still the best way to ensure that people find you on the Web.

Why Do You as a Site Owner Need SEO?

It’s natural to think of a web-based business as something different than a brick and mortar store, but in fact, the principles of how the business operates are nearly identical. Your web site is your storefront whereby people can see what it is you have to offer. The only difference is that traffic doesn’t come from people walking along the sidewalk, but rather through people typing into a search engine exactly what they’re looking for.

When people do these kinds of searches, statistics show that the results that appear on the first 2-3 pages of a search are the ones that get the most attention. Those that are lower down on the search rankings often go ignored, which is why it’s so vital to use good SEO techniques to ensure that your site shows up within the first 3 pages.

A Few Words about Website Design

When people think about web site design, they often think of the layout, the colors, the graphics and the fonts. And while those are all important to the image of your business, and for visitors to easily navigate your site, the truth is that it doesn’t matter how nice your site looks if no one can find it; that’s where SEO can help.

Every good web site design should employ content that’s optimized to be found when someone types what you’re offering into a search engine. But good SEO and web site design require optimized content such as keyword placement in title tags, heading tags, etc. – things a good web site designer will know how to use to your benefit.

Increasing Sales is Your Goal

If you’re operating an online business then you’re probably doing it to get more clients. While some people have their sites up for information or other purposes, we’re focusing on SEO as a way to bring paying customers to an online business. And if you’re not using good SEO techniques, you might not be getting the clients who are looking for what you’re offering. Unless you have an advertising budget like Amazon, you’re going to have to find other ways to drive traffic to your site, and SEO is the best way to do that.

Good SEO techniques will result in not only more traffic coming to your site, but the kind of traffic that’s made up of people who are searching for targeted keywords, which can help your business in the long run. And that’s what it’s all about.

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