Tag Archives: Website Design

Key Attributes of Web Design

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web designEarning from AdSense should not be too difficult, but it may be better to make sure you follow some obvious points for web design. Every website should have a purpose and an objective. For example, if it is your company’s site, it should focus on your customers. Possibly also on your investors. Your customers look for products, services, and information about your company. Give them the information they are looking for. However, other elements apply which can help your online presence be successful. We will cover some of the more essential elements as follows.

Key Attributes of Web Design

If you fail on any of these, your customers may never see your content and never visit your site again. Your content must be able to answer their questions, but if they cannot even see it, you will not be successful. This leads to the first key attribute.

Site speed – whether it is loading on a desktop or a mobile, it must load fast. Consumers are unwilling to wait for more than a couple of seconds. Your site must load within that time frame.

Page scrolling – large pages with lots of content must support scrolling on desktops and mobile devices. They need to quickly get to the location and information they are looking for.

Site style – the style should be pleasing to the eye, easy to navigate, and intuitive to easily support the customers’ need to find information and answer their questions.

Keep it simple – no one wants complexity any longer. Consumers will quickly move to another site if they cannot easily figure out how to navigate or find the info they are looking for. Keep it simple in everything you provide to the consumer.

SEO Website level Ranking Factors

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SEO Website level Ranking FactorsSEO website level ranking factors that are important to search engines are a closely guarded secret. However many experts find that the following are considered among the most important factors.  Of course, this also assumes you have fresh up to date content that is original and compelling to your users.

SEO Website level Ranking Factors

HTTPS – security for your customer transactions is extremely important. HTTPS provides an additional level of security for customer transactions involving payment via credit cards etc.

Site speed – If your site does not load quickly, readers will just move to other sites. Fast response, especially for mobile users, is so important these days, that Google considers this factor a major criterion for ranking purposes.

Mobile-friendliness – your content must be readable on a small screen. Users will not take the time to even try to read the small print. There are mobile test sites that will compare your content and give you a pass or fail with respect to mobile-friendliness.

Sitemap – Navigation on your site should appear to be seamless and easy for users to navigate. A site map, an index, and a category map are all tools that users will use to find what they are looking for on your site.

Links to authority sites – links to and from authority sites will also improve your ranking. They give your site credibility in the eyes of the search engines and your users. Consider eliminating links that do not rank well. They could be pulling you down with them.

A number of pages on a site – Regular updates keep posts current. Add new content on a regular basis. It shows a growing healthy site. There is no magic number of pages. Regular updates and additions are most important.

Site downtime – if your site is down, there is no way anyone can get to it. A high downtime for any reason is a death knell for a website. This should be one of the highest priorities for and website owner. Keep your site live all of the time.

Website crashes or becomes unresponsive

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Website crashesIf the website does not respond or the Website crashes, there are lots of reasons that would cause this particular problem. It is not always a problem for the website itself; there are so many connections within the Internet that there could be a problem, and they could be just about anywhere. For example, to reach any website from your computer, there could be as many as 23 connections over routers and modems through the Internet before they reach our hosting site. Anyone of those could be the culprit that is slowing things down. Sometimes, it is just heavy traffic on one of the routers or the server your website is hosted on that is causing the problem.

Once this traffic clears, your response time will be back to normal. Before reacting, wait an hour or so and then retest. If it is still responding slower than usual, it is time to take some action. You will need to do some investigation to figure out where the delay is occurring so you can do anything about it.

Website Crashes – These include

  • Your ISP has lost connection with the Internet
  • A portion of the Internet is down
  • A router on the path to your website is not responding
  • Your connection to the Internet could be lost
  • Your computer, tablet, or phone may need to be rebooted.

These are the main reasons why a website may not respond, in addition to denial-of-service attacks on the host. Give it sixty minutes, and then retry. Just be patient and try clicking the link a little later to see what happens. If it doesn’t work the second time, it is a good idea to reach out to the website owner.

If you are the website owner, any delay can cause you to lose traffic and customers. Always investigate any delays and take the appropriate action immediately if you want to maintain your revenue stream or customer base. Start with your host provider and ask a technician to load your website in his or her browser.

If it loads quickly, chances are that it is not your website, your host, or your server that is causing the problem. It will be somewhere else, not your website provider’s issue. Check your server to determine where the delays are creeping in.

For more details about web hosting, click here.

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SEO – Strategic Design Change

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Strategic Design ChangeYou’re adding content, maintaining the basic design, a good balance of images, and crawlable text, yet you are not getting the traffic that you feel should be coming your way. What changes should you make, and how far should you go? Is there a light bulb moment, as shown in the diagram, that changes everything? What about the investment that has already been made in time, design, writing, etc? Do you just throw this out and start over? This is the Strategic Design Change that most, if not all, designers face.

There are so many questions, and most website owners as well as web site managers just do not have the time to deal with these kinds of issues. It is important to have a strategy for your web site – what are the objectives, what customers are you trying to reach, what is the best way to reach them and how much investment do you make in this aspect of your business compared to other possibilities.

Strategic Design Change – Decisions

These are hard decisions to make, and most people will just go on doing the same thing until something happens that forces them to change. Also, the search engines are constantly updating their search engines all of the time to try to deliver a better result to their customers who pay the bills.

We feel that the right strategy is to define the following attributes and then focus on delivering to your customers:

  • Who are your customers
  • What products are you offering them
  • What services are you providing
  • Have you described these well on your web page
  • Do you have high-quality quality well-written content that describes the above
  • Is your site responsive
  • Can your customers find the information they need and are looking for
  • Is there a way for your customers to provide feedback
  • The old principle – Apply the KISS principle – Keep it Simple ….. applies

Every customer will have a different strategy, but the point is that they need to have one before they even begin building a website. They need to have a strategy before they begin making serious changes to an existing website.

They also need to understand the changes that they will make to existing sites and what impact this will have on search results.

For building websites, SEO, and the strategy behind it, click here.

 

Improve Customer Satisfaction – WebSite Health

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Improve Customer SatisfactionOur last post discussed web site speed i.e. the time it takes to load a page once the reader clicks on a link to your site. There are added aspects to consider. For example, if your site uses a contact form.  Some templates come with a built-in contact form. While others will need a plugin to add this feature. Test the contact form for speed of response, for ease of use, and results in terms of customers and readers filling in the form. Remember to respond to them immediately.

Even if it is an automated response it is better than nothing at all. You will need to follow up within 24 hours with a real response. Otherwise, you risk getting bad comments on various boards, etc. This includes those people who post comments on various topics. Respond to them, even the negative ones. Other readers will gauge your response and decide if they wish to contact you after reading how you handle even the negative responses.

Improve Customer Satisfaction – Digital Books

If it applies a digital book might be the answer to retain loyal customers and keep them coming back. For example, we have not done this yet on our site, we are just getting started, but stay tuned we will have one sometime in the future. We also blog consistently talking about various topics that are of interest to our readers and to small business owners who are looking for information about building, maintaining, and operating a web site.

Improve Customer Satisfaction – Test after Every change

Operating a blog or a web site involves changing content, upgrading plugins, and themes all of the time. As these elements change, they sometimes stop working the way they should and the only way to find this out is to always test after making a change to confirm that everything is still working the way it should. Set up a regular testing methodology to ensure that the content is being delivered the way you wish and the plugins are doing what they are supposed to. Fix any negative test results immediately to minimize the impact on your customers.

Check the Time it Takes Web Pages to Load

We thought it is important to emphasize web page load speed one more time. There are many locations along the path between the server where your website is hosted and the user or person loading your page. There are a multitude of hops that have routers processing yours and millions of other bits of data. If one of those routers is overloaded or running a bit slow, your page will not load quickly. Same thing if your server is overloaded.

The first thing to do is to run a test called Tracert. Basically it will check the response time for all hops between your website and your location. If there are locations including your server that are responding slowly, it will be shown. You can then decide if any action should be taken and where to focus your efforts!

For more topics on customer satisfaction, click here.

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Web Site Health – Customer Satisfaction

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Web Site HealthYou have improved the content of your companies web site or blog, it is fresh and accurate. There are lots of products covered and you have added all of the information that your clients and customers may need to help them decide on using your firm or contacting your firm for more information. But calls and contacts are simply not coming through and you are beginning to wonder if the investment in this web site was worth it. Maybe you should review your Web Site Health first.

There are many different attributes that will determine if customers will come to your site and then stay there to browse your material. By having excellent original content you have satisfied the search engines, but have you done enough? Once your potential readers or customers have been presented with search results that include your web site, the next step is for them to click on the link and be presented with the results.

Web Site Health – Response time

Many web sites are slow to respond for a variety of reasons. In some cases it is the server that it is running on that is slow. In others it can be a network issue. It might even be the readers last mile or modem at their location. Regardless, if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load a page, many people are just going to move onto another site and you have lost them forever!

The server and the configuration of your web site is within your control, while the other elements are not. Take the necessary steps to make sure that you are paying for a high response time server. Then design your web site to be as fast as possible. Delete any plugins that are not being used. Compress images before uploading to your blog. Delete anything that is not being used so that your blog can run as fast as absolutely possible.

Select a WordPress Template that is Efficient

There are all types of templates available. Some are more complex than others and some will load faster than others. Keep it as simple as possible. Test a lot until you have a template that delivers the content in an efficient manner that is satisfying visually to the customer. Keep testing to ensure that the theme and template work well with your server. Remember the 3 second rule and if your site is not loading within this time frame you could be losing customers.

For information on customer satisfaction information, click here.

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Simple Web Design

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Simple Web DesignSome web sites look so complicated and even difficult to read that you just move on to another site. Ever stop to wonder how much time it takes to develop and maintain a complicated website? Something with lots of graphics, links to other pages both on and off-site, updating of content that is related to current events or activities within your company. These topics all take a lot of time compared to simple web site design criteria. If you are just starting your business or perhaps just getting started with an online presence, you probably should follow the KISS principle – Keep it simple silly! You can always add more detail later and pretty up the site later when you have the time or the need. Your customers will not care provided that the basic information is available and easily found. It still needs to look professional, easy to navigate, and provide the information they are looking for, however, this is easily completed even on a relatively simple and straightforward web site.

Simple Web Design – Basic Web Sites

What are the basic things that customers and readers are looking for on company sites? They are easy to consider if you think about your business for a minute. Here is a partial list, although we think it is pretty comprehensive :

  • Contact information that is accurate and works e.g. email
  • Who you are and where you are located
  • Products and services that are offered
  • How to purchase the products and services
  • FAQ’s which are up to date and really do answer all of the standard questions
  • Shipping information if applicable
  • Information about ordering products and services
  • Note that ordering and processing is not considered part of a basic site

If you cover the above in five or six pages that are easy to navigate, then you probably have a pretty simple web design. As you add more products or services, you may need more pages as well.

Updates to your site should be relatively easy and straightforward. You should be able to perform these changes yourself providing minor edits, adding pages as needed and updating content as needed. Adding functionality such as taking and processing orders online takes you beyond the simple web site design. There are widgets available that will also handle these functions for your customers.

If you need more information or would like a web site set up for your company contact us today be sending an email. For more web design topics and ideas, click here.

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Web Design Inspiration

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Web Design InspirationWhere do you look for web design inspiration? Most small business owners are so busy trying to keep their business going and above water, that the simply do not have enough time to worry about fancy web sites. They just delegate or do not have a web site at all or they have the bare minimum on a web site for their customers to refer to when they need information. But, what is the right amount of information and do you need something really fancy to attract customers and satisfy their needs when they do land on your web site.  We will try to answer these two questions for business owners who are on a limited budget and who are also focused on their core business interests.

Web Design Inspiration – Provide the Basic Level of Information

Customers need to know who you are, how they can reach you and what products are available. If you allow ordering online then you must be able to process payments. Also provide shipping information and have a back-office system that orders, tracks and completes those customer requests. You will need a frequently asked question area as well. You must provide reasonable real-time support for those customers who would like to speak to a company representative.

The search engines need to be able to find you and index your web site. This usually means original quality content that is updated  on a regular basis to keep it fresh and current. It also tells your customers that this is a viable business that has real products and is worth their time online as well as perhaps visiting your store or business.

Web Design Inspiration – Commitment

We touched on this issue in the last paragraph. Web Design Inspiration is more than just building a web site. You need to have a budget to build a web site. Pay for the ongoing domain name and hosting expenses. But, you also need to be committed to keeping your web site up to date. Add new and fresh content to it on a regular basis. This takes some time and effort. Which usually means a budget to pay someone to do this for you.

If you have questions about these topics or others, please contact us and we will try to answer them to the best of our ability. For more web design ideas and topics, click here.

 

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Best Web Design

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Best Web DesignThere 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.

For small business ideas about your online presence, click here.

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Best Business Web Design

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Best Business Web DesignIn our last post, we discussed some of the areas to focus on when it comes to setting up the best business websites. In this post, we wanted to discuss design issues for the best business web design for basic web sites. What are the design issues that need to be addressed? These include a basic layout that is easy to navigate, and easy for customers to find the information they need. Functionality is also important. There should be no broken links within the website and to other websites that you might link to.

Many people like fancy websites that have lots of colors and links. A basic site with great content will surpass a complex website every time in terms of visits and the ability of the owner to keep it up to date. Complex websites just take a lot more time to maintain. Customers and readers also have difficulty navigating complex web sites. They may miss important information on your site as a result. Here is some more detail.

Best Business Web Design – Keep it Simple

Maintenance of a web site means that you keep the content fresh and that updates are completed on a regular basis. If you allow customer interaction on your website, this too must be able to be maintained. You must react to your customers. Provide updates for a variety of questions posed by customers. The message is that the more functionality is provided on your site, the more time must be spent keeping it fresh.

If you allow comments, reply to those comments and address reader questions. If you are the owner of the site, then you will need to budget time to do these updates. You may need to budget to pay someone to do the work on your behalf. Keeping a website simple and straightforward will allow you to focus on the content and not on the graphics which really do not add to search engine indexation.

Best Business Web Design – Search Engine Indexation

There are many steps that SEO experts believe will help a website achieve the first page on search results. The primary solution is to have excellent content, fresh content, original content, and content that is written around the keywords that are associated with your industry and business. If you do not have this type of content, internet readers, your customers, etc will never find you using a search engine because they will never be presented with your website in the search results.

The best-designed web sites will incorporate SEO into their daily and weekly schedules of updates and adding fresh material. Other forms of advertising also may be of interest as well to increase readership. A strong social media presence on Twitter and Facebook, for example, business cards with the web site address, invoices with the web site address, etc will also help to increase traffic which in turn demonstrates to the search engines that this is a viable website.