9 Tips for Effective Web Design
Maintaining a website is often a difficult task for many business owners. It can be a daunting task that calls for dedication, energy, time, and also a lot of patience. For a new webmaster, this new found responsibility can initially lead to them making a lot of mistakes during the designing of the website, as well as while running it.
Therefore, this article will focus on 9 things that every new website owner should know. By utilizing these tips one can save a lot of time, money and frustration.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
There is a pretty good indication, if you own a website, that you’ve been contacted by SEO agencies claiming to be able to get your site to the number 1 position of GOOGLE or to increase your traffic 1000%.
However, what these agencies neglect to inform you is that such results will short lived, and once you finally realized that your site has been blacklisted by Google and other search engines, they’ll have disappeared along with your hard earned money.
With that said, it is important to keep in mind that SEO isn’t magic – it’s mostly common sense. It is important to stick to a couple techniques in which you are familiar and successful, and you’ll be satisfied with the outcome.
Website Viewability
It is important to never be under the impression that when you view a website that a friend or neighbor will view that same website the same way as you. Due to the increase of mobile browsing, this is now more of a reality than ever before.
There is a remarkable selection of monitor sizes, screen resolutions, operating systems, browsers, and devices out there. Therefore, website behaves and look exactly the same on all of them, nor it is expected to. The important thing is that you make sure everyone can get to the content provided on the site, regardless of how it is being viewed.
Social Media
It is important to find ways to make it simple for the audience to initiate a conversation with you. Take, for example, if you are the owner of a product website, then take the time to set up a Facebook fan page, that will enable your fans to gather and talk about you. Also enabling people to add comments or testimonials to your site can be very beneficial.
Look for any possible way to create a community around your business or for suggestions to sustain interest in your website. It doesn’t hurt to give your target audience a voice and to let them be heard as well.
Hiring a Website Designer/Developer
HTML was intentionally created to be easy and stress-free to learn. While on one hand, this is great, due to the fact, that it has enabled almost anyone to publish content. On the other hand, it’s bad because it has led to numerous business owners and companies paying non-professionals with a basic HTML knowledge to build their sites.
It is very important to remember that before you pay someone to build a website for you, validate their credentials and guarantee that they’re a professional. Even though HTML is the foundation of the web, there is much more to learn to be knowledgeable at designing truly vibrant, magnificent, cross-browser compatible, specialized, search-engine-optimized websites.
Content
In website design, content is everything. When designing a website it is important to provide all the information that potential client and customers are going to need to know about your business. Therefore, it is essential that you think about the following things before you begin the design process:
- what is it that you want to tell your current customers, as well as potential customers about you and your business, and vice versa, and
- what is it that your current customers and potential customers want to know about you and your business.
Sure, there will be similarities in your responses for the two questions, but do not worry that’s a good thing. For instance, there are the basics, like hours of operation, contact information, pricing, services and products available, physical address (if relevant), what payment types you accept, etc.
More importantly, however, there are the reasons they need to or should want to do business with you and what makes your business different from that of your competition. Take the time to consider everything you want to be included on your website, and then work in conjunction with your web designer, and possibly a copywriter or copy editor, to set it all up into a design structure that’s going be feasible for a successful business website.
Website Maintenance
Most of us are somewhat familiar with print design projects such as brochures, business cards, and signs. After these are they’re printed and delivered to you, the job is complete – there’s nothing else to do. With a website, however, the task is never finished. There will never be a point where you can just quit and forget about maintaining your website.
There will always be new information to add, new features to include and talk about, and information to update or remove. Not to mention, it is essential to be regular about the web site’s appearance. You want it to appear current with the ever evolving times and current events. This will ensure that it feels fresh and up to date.
When building a website, the services offered are often a direct reflection of the price of the product. This does not mean that it is necessary for someone to pay a ridiculous amount of money in order to receive a simple and professional site design. Just be careful of anyone whose price is exceptionally cheap.
Before you begin the design process it is important to take the time to think about what and how you want your site to act and appear. Your site is going to be a direct reflection of your business after all. Not doing this efficiently can make or break your business.
It is important to remember that when it comes to building a new site or adding a new feature, one can anticipate that the first try is going to have some problems. This is completely normal in web design. All you can do is simply stay calm and unstressed while you work with your web designer to resolve the minor issues and getting the website up and running the way you want.