There is lots of debate about what the best web design should consist of. Should there be lots of pictures, video, artistry of some kind or should it be high on content that provides the information the reader is looking for. Should it be easy to navigate and find information? And should there be an opportunity for the customer or the reader to provide feedback? The answer we believe is all of these things – an opportunity for feedback, easy to navigate, easy to find information, high on content, and most of all address questions and information that a reader is searching for.  The best web design is not all about graphics and flashy designs. This approach can confuse the reader and take them away from the information they may have been looking for. Finding the right balance can be a challenge for many web developers.

Best Web Design – The Basics

The basics of the best web design should include some information about the company, who the main players are, the products and services they provide, information about those products and Q&A about everything from how to use the products to how to order, how they are shipped and how they are returned if needed. If you can order material and products, is it easy, can the customer pay via multiple means and select multiple shipping methods? Get this basic design correct and the flash and graphics will not really matter. There must be good quality pictures for the products so that people can see exactly what they are buying.

Best Web Design – Keep it Up To Date

Once the web site has been built and launched you are not yet finished. Every web site should be constantly updated to provide more information on the products, customer questions, adding new products, help to customers on how to use the products, and much more.

Keep your site up to date with fresh content and the search engines will respond in kind by keeping you high on the search results. Content is considered one of the most important elements in terms of web site ranking by the search engines. Never lose sight of having high-quality content.

Listen to your customers, particularly the questions they ask. If the information they are looking for is not on your site, then you have some work to do. The fact they could not find it can suggest that it was too difficult for them to find. It could also mean they just did not look. Either way, you need to figure this out and take the appropriate action.

Once you have all this, then you can think about graphics or flashy material. Never lose sight of the basic issues we identified above.

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We just met with a company who has a really nice web site. It is professionally done, conveys all of the information that is needed about the company, all pages seem to work and they have someone who maintains the site from a 3rd party company.  In our judgement it might qualify as one of the best designed websites, except for one aspect which was the reason they asked to meet with me. They do not have any tracking information at all on their site so they have no idea of how many hits they are getting each day or month for that matter and they have no information about who is visiting their site. They might be missing leads and potential customers. Every web site should have some form of tracking either visible or invisible to gather this kind of valuable information.

Best Designed Websites – Tracking

There are many reasons to have some kind of a stat counter on a web site. Even just basic information such as how much traffic they are receiving will help convince management that the site is worthwhile spending advertising $ on. What browsers are being used. What search engines are being used to find this web site. Where are the visitors coming from and are they returning. How long do they stay on the site? Which pages do they spend time on and how are they moving about the site? All of these questions and more can be easily answered. Use a simple tracking code placed on every page of the site.

Best Designed Websites – SEO

Know how many visitors you are receiving. Focus on bringing more traffic to your web site and be able to track it. When you make changes you will be able to see just how much impact the change has. This is extremely important if you are attempting to demonstrate results for your management team. It help justify the money and time that is being spent.

SEO or search engine optimization is all about the art of having content that the search engines index. The best designed websites must have this attribute in order to garner traffic from real customers. Don’t forget that the best designed web sites also containing tracking tools as well.

For more information  about this topic as well as designing a web site for your company, call us today. Click here of more posts about this subject.

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