How To Make Your Website Ready For Mobile
The best time to start thinking about whether your website is mobile ready or not is when you start developing your site. One tool that comes in handy for a savvy website developer intent on building a mobile-ready website is mobiReady.
So what should you incorporate, or not incorporate, into your website to make it ready for mobile browsers?
For starters, strip your website of all Flash elements. The won’t be visible in most mobile web browsers. Also, frames are difficult to parse for mobile browsers as well, so dispense with them too. And while you’re at it, strip away any code that bloats your website and makes it load slowly. If your website is too large, mobile web browsers will have a difficult time seeing it.
If you’re building your website on a content management system, try to find a module or a plugin that converts it for mobile browsers or makes it easier for mobile browsers to parse. Again, test your website on a mobile test page before making it live.
Mobile browsing is here to stay. And with smart phones becoming more and more popular, it will some day be as common as browsing the web on a home computer. You might as well get ready for that day now.
If necessary, design a separate website for mobile browsers that looks like your company site but is built just for mobile users.
Is Custom Web Design Really ‘Custom’?
There are a lot of website design companies online that purport to build you a custom-designed website, then use an off-the-shelf web template. Sure, they modify the template, but that’s hardly “custom.”
A custom-designed website is one where the web design company takes your concept and builds you a website from scratch. The language used for the website is immaterial. It can be PHP, CSS, JavaScript, ASP, or a combination of the above. Or something else entirely. But they code the website from top to bottom. And they do it with sound search engine optimization strategies in mind.
Web design isn’t rocket science, but it’s not exactly Cracker Jack box thinking either. There is some creativity involved.
A good web design company can take your company image, your logo, your brand, and design a real website that captures the personality and essence of your brand. It is unique. It is custom designed in the truest sense of the word.
When you are in the market for a custom web design, take the time to interview companies first. Find out what their web design strategy is. Do they take an off-the-shelf template and modify it or do they truly build you a website from the ground up?
Boost Your Traffic With UGC
UGC stands for user generated content. If you use it, it means less work for you, more monetization opportunities, fewer time management hurdles, and possibly even better content. In most cases, it also means more website traffic.
User generated content can be solicited in any number of ways, however. And it can take on many forms. It can be straight textual content, other graphical content, photographs, videos, social networking content, or a mixture of the above. But how do you get people to send you their content to start with?
First, you should build your own content and get the pump primed. Once you’ve attracted a certain level of traffic, start building your platform. Then, put a call out on your website, in your e-mail blasts, and in forums within your niche.
You should make it easy for your website visitors to upload their content. Add a membership feature to your website and give each member the means to add content within their own community profile area. That content can be anything they desire, but you should encourage content that compliments the content you’ve already loaded to your site and that attracted people to it in the first place.
User generated content is how savvy webmasters build communities today. But you must build the platform.
Are You Ready For Cyber Monday?
Last Christmas shopping season was a record-breaking season. In fact, Cyber Monday (November 29, 2010) was the biggest online shopping day in history topping $1 billion in sales. Are you ready for this year?
Whether or not we’ll surpass that landmark day in online sales this year is a big question, but it’s not out of the question. In fact, it’s quite possible.
Online sales have increased year over year for the past three or four years. The trend is developing. More and more people are getting comfortable shopping online and the Christmas season is the time when they are most likely to break down and whip out their credit cards. Online merchants should be ready. And if you’re not ready by now, you’re not likely to be ready.
What’s it take to succeed in online commerce? You have to have a website ready to take orders. That means you need an attractive web design with clear and easy navigation and a safe and secure payment system. The No. 1 factor in whether online shoppers are willing to buy from you or not is whether you build trust. If they don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you.
Cyber Monday is just around the corner. Are you ready? Let the shopping begin.
Are Share Buttons Necessary?
It’s pretty much agreed upon by all web designers today that social share buttons are a necessity on your web pages. What we might disagree on are how many and which ones are necessary. But there are three that most of us would agree are essential.
- Facebook Like – Facebook is the most trafficked website online. Chances are, you’re using it and your friends are using it. That alone is reason enough to have a Like button on every page of your website no matter what niche you serve.
- Tweet/Retweet – While Twitter isn’t as popular as Facebook, and may never be, it’s still popular enough that you should consider a tweet/retweet button for every page of content you create.
- LinkedIn – Again, LinkedIn isn’t Twitter or Facebook, but if you are business that serves other businesses, then you should consider a LinkedIn button for your website.
Another up and coming social service that bears looking at is Google+. With rapid growth, Google+ looks promising, though the jury is still out which niches might benefit most from the service.
Other social share buttons might be helpful for your site as well. If you run a technology website, look for services with a high level of technology sector participation. The same goes for whatever niche you serve. Look for social media sites where people in your niche tend to hangout.
Whatever your niche, social media is in. Make sure you encourage sharing by adding those buttons to your website.
Writing Your Website’s About Us Page
These days, just about every website has an About Us page. But they are largely misnamed. The page isn’t really about you at all. It’s about your customers and when you write it you should go to great pains to make it all about your customers.
How do you do that, exactly?
For starters, you don’t have to write it in second person. I’m not talking about that. What I am suggesting is that you make your About Us page content focused on the needs of your customers rather than on your need to talk about yourself.
Here are five ways to ensure that your About Us content answers your customers’ – or potential customers’ – questions about your company:
- Tell them what year your company started, and when you started working in your sector if your company is new. They want to know what experience you have to solve their problems.
- What inspired you to start your business? Were you trying to solve a particular need?
- How is your business unique? What sets you apart from the competition? Drive these points home. They are your selling points.
- Define your service area.
- What causes and charities do you support? People want to know so don’t be shy about telling them your community service hot buttons.
If you answer these 5 questions on your About Us page, you’ll go a long way to meeting the expectations of your website visitors and potential customers.
Web Hosting And Web Design
Many small business owners spend so much time worried about web design concerns they often forget about the importance of web hosting. That’s a fatal mistake and it could cost you.
It’s not that web design isn’t important. It’s very important, but let’s draw an analogy. Should you design a nice big and beautiful house and start building it before you’ve bought the real estate to put it on? What if you design a house that requires a half acre lot, but you’ve bought a 1/4-acre lot instead? See the problem?
With web design, your problems can often be just as bad. Design your website and choose the wrong hosting for it and it can hurt you in the long run. You could have frequent service outings that take your website off line for periods of time and frustrate your customers. Or you could see your website getting hacked often because of lax security. All because you chose the wrong hosting company and the wrong hosting service.
When you are in the planning stage of your website, consult your web design company for their recommendations on web hosts. You could save yourself a lot of headache down the road by picking the right hosting company to begin with.
CMS Or HTML?
Should you design your next website with HTML or a content management system (CMS)? To be sure, each has its pros and cons.
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HTML – We are on the dawn of a new age with HTML. HTML 5 is currently in development and some website development experts have already started using it, either in purity or in conjunction with a CMS. New developments in the Web’s basic language make it extremely attractive, especially for pure website designers who want to build a website from scratch.
There are many good reasons to design your website with HTML, but you’ll always be relegated to updating your website one page at a time. A CMS doesn’t have that disadvantage.
CMS – While a content management system has its flaws – decreased security, for instance (and even then they have come a long way to defeat breaches) – a good CMS can make your life a whole lot easier. Instead of focusing on design with every website update you undertake, you can focus on the implementation of your content and save yourself oodles of time in the process.
There are free open source CMSs available that can make your website look like a world class website. And there are systems that you can pay for that will do the trick as well. Either way, a good CMS can offer many of the same advantages as HTML.
So which is right for you, HTML or a CMS? That sounds like a question a web design consultant can answer for you.
How Important Is Page Load Speed?
One of the most important aspects of SEO is page load speed. It’s easy to overlook this if you are new to search engine optimization. If you do your own SEO, then you might overlook it completely. If you have an SEO firm, be sure to ask them to check page load speed.
Page load speed is important for one reason and one reason only: Your site visitors expect it.
It’s true that Google places emphasis on page load speed for search ranking purposes. The reason they do this is because page load speed is important to website visitors. If someone conducts a search and finds your website in Google’s rankings, then they visit your site, and the page loads slowly, they will likely place blame on Google for sending them to a sub-par web page. That’s why Google rewards pages that load fast and penalizes those that don’t.
The time to think about page load speed is when you design your website. It’s better to head it off at the pass than to wait until your rankings decline in the search engines.
Things that can affect page load speed are photos, videos, and multimedia presentations, CMS with heavy code, themes and skins, JavaScript and other extemporaneous code, and a number of other factors. You owe it to your site visitors to ensure that your pages load quickly. You also owe it to yourself.
Is HTML Or A CMS Superior?
The debate has been going on a long time. Some proponents of web design prefer to design their website using HTML. Others prefer a content management system, or CMS. But which is better?
I think it depends.
First, some CMSs are better than others so you have to be careful which one you use. Do you go for a paid CMS that you have to spend oodles of money on or do you opt for the paid open source version?
Here are some things to think about before deciding to use HTML or a CMS.
- Security is better with an HTML website
- Designing a website from scratch is usually easier and quicker with a CMS
- You have more control over design with HTML
- A CMS can be enhanced with plugins and add-ons
- Traditionally, SEO has been more effective with HTML, however, many CMSs now rival HTML with search engine optimization
- CMSs are often code heavy and can slow down your website, which diminishes your SEO effectiveness
- You don’t have to know any coding languages to work with a CMS
- If you design your website with HTML, it can be very tedious; one character out of place can mess up your entire website
There are pros and cons to using either a CMS or coding a website with HTML. Weigh your options and choose the one that is best for you.
Why WordPress Makes A Good CMS
When it comes to web design, not many people can do their own. It requires special skills such as knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and maybe even other Web languages. But many small business owners and community service organizations are beginning to design their own websites now with WordPress as a CMS. Is that a good idea?
Actually, it’s a great idea, but don’t think that using WordPress is going to absolve you from having to know any programming languages. You can build your own website using WordPress, but there are some functions for which you might need professional help.
For instance, if you want to include your Twitter stream in your blog, where’s the best place to put it so that it doesn’t get in the way of your reader’s enjoyment but still provides the content benefits that you are looking for? Do you know how to map an image inside of your header? A lot of people don’t.
Special knowledge aside, there are plenty of benefits to using WordPress as your web design CMS:
- It’s flexible
- It’s free
- You can tweak it and customize it to fit your needs
- Built in search engine optimization
- Cuts down on time when designing a website
While the benefits are there for using WordPress as a CMS, you can still get more out of it if you let a professional web designer build your site then teach you how to upload your own pages. You won’t have to pay for ongoing design and management, but you can get a good looking website right from the beginning. Then, when you want to add to it, all you have to do is log in and write your pages.
Should You Use Affiliate Links?
When building your small business website, the one you’re going to use for promoting your local service business, should you include affiliate links and promote products that aren’t yours?
There are two ways to think about this question. The first way is to consider those affiliate links exit holes. Anything that causes the site visitor to leave your website is an exit hole and it means you lose a sale. Does the commission you’ll make on that affiliate product make up for the income you’re going to lose by not acquiring that customer? If not, then you shouldn’t use the affiliate link.
Another way to look at this is that you’re going to lose some of your site visitors anyway. Not everyone is going to buy your product or use your service. They may not be in the market for your service right now or they might not be the right target for your service. Either way, you’re not going to make the sale anyway so why not offer them something else instead?
Both of these points are valid. You’ll have to decide which way of thinking appeals to you and decide to use affiliate product links based on your own goals and desires.
If you do decide to use affiliate links on your small business service site, do so with these things in mind:
- Use them sparingly.
- Don’t make the affiliate products the main focus on your site – that should be your services.
- Place affiliate links where they won’t draw undue attention to themselves, but will be attractive and get clicked on by people who aren’t interested in your service today.
- Think about your web design first. If affiliate links and widgets won’t look good with your website, then don’t use them.
What A Heat Map Can Do
One of the most useful website analytics tools is a heat map.
A heat map measures your traffic and its actions by showing you a colorful representation of that traffic. For instance, the hottest part of your website – the part where most of your traffic is navigating toward – will appear in red. Still hot parts of your website, but less hot than the red, will appear in yellow. It gets cooler from there.
Let’s say you decide to use a heat map and discover that you have a page on your website that shows the hottest part of the page to be on the top right, but a link that you really want your visitors to click on is on the top left side of that page. Based on the information you see on the heat map, you should move that link over to the top right side of your page so that you can increase the number of visitors who click on it. More than likely, after you move the link, you’ll see that click-throughs have gone up.
Heat maps are an essential tool of metrics that any website owner can use for improving website development. You simply watch your visitors, see what they do, then tweak your website to match their expectations. Pretty simple.
Why Free Web-Based Hosts Stink
Just when I thought that everyone online had given up on free web-based hosting, I bump into someone who swears by it. Really. I was shocked.
The reason this person liked the free hosting was because it was, well, free. But that was about the only benefit. He did go on to say that he was happy with the search engine optimization benefits he was getting (I checked and his website was ranked No. 2 for a great keyword and a geotargeting add-on). He was also impressed with the design features, the fact that his host could add a blog to his site, and the analytics available for his website. All of that was good news.
But there is one big overriding risk to using a free web-based host, and that risk is too great to accept any of the benefits. What if that host disappears overnight or decides to shut down?
This happened to long-time free host Geocities. Remember it? It was owned by Yahoo!, then Yahoo! decided to shut the doors. All those website owners had to transfer their websites to other hosts. NOTE: Free web-based hosts are not compatible; you have to download the content, then copy it back to the new free host. It’s not easy.
If you have a traditional hosting company, any time you build a website and you want to transfer it to another host, it’s just a matter of transferring files to your hard drive and then uploading them to the new host. Easy.
Word of advice: Stay away from the free web-based hosts.
HTML 5 Web Page Sections
HTML 5 is in full development mode and I believe we’ll see the first iteration go public within the next year, maybe two. One of the most interesting changes from HTML 4 to HTML 5 is how page sections will be used during the design phase of website development. Here are 10 web page sections HTML 5 offers that will lead to better and more efficient website design.
- Body Element
- Section Element
- Nav Element
- Article Element
- Aside Element
- H-tag Elements
- Hgroup Element
- Header Element
- Footer Element
- Address Element
Most of these are new to HTML 5. A few, like Body, H tags, Header, and Footer are currently being used by HTML 4. While HTML 4 offers a way to include a navigation element on your web pages, HTML 5 changes the design process by including the Nav Element in the HTML and giving it its own code structure.
I’m particularly excited about the Section Element, Article and Aside Elements, and the Address Element. These HTML features will allow any website to be laid out in classic magazine style.
The Article Element will make it easier for web developers to add content to a web page that can be easily syndicated. The Aside Element will allow web designers to add sidebars to web pages easily and without fanfare. The Address Element will give content authors a way to provide contact information for each content element they produce.
HTML 5 is going to be a major new development in web design. I hope you’re looking as forward to it as I am.
Your Most Important Web Design Element
Is there such a thing as the most important web design element? Doesn’t it depend on your Web marketing and web design goals? Yes, it does. But it also depends on what you can use your website for and the current conventions. Right now, there is one Internet marketing channel that is considered the most effective channel of all.
I’m talking about e-mail marketing. Since it is the most efficient and most effective means of conducting online marketing, it makes sense to put an opt-in form on your website. I consider it the most important web design element.
Of course, you should put a lot of careful thought into the placement of your opt-in form on the page. Where do you want it to appear and what do you want it to look like?
Your e-mail marketing opt-in subscription form should be eye catching. You want the reader to notice it. But you don’t want it to be so noticeable that the site visitor fixates on it. It should be visible and inviting so that you increase your opt-in subscribers. But you don’t want it to take away from the information on your web pages.
Website design is a creative science. Nothing is absolute. However, if you consider that e-mail marketing is still the most effective means of marketing online, then an opt-in form for your e-mail marketing campaigns is an essential element for any website.
How Many Languages Do You Need For Web Design?
Web design has come a long way in the last 20 years. It used to be, if you wanted to build a web page, then you had one option – HTML. Hypertext Markup Language is the basic language of the Web. Today, if you are building a website of any kind, chances are you are going to incorporate HTML into your programming even if you use other languages.
But HTML is not the only language you need, by far. If you expect your web site to have some interactive features, then you’ll need more – much more – than HTML.
CSS, or cascading style sheets, is a language devised to help Web programmers build websites where design elements can be defined in a single document across multiple pages. Then you can use HTML for your content on each individual page.
PHP allows Web site designers the ability to add interactive design features into their web pages without jacking up the HTML.
JavaScript is another interactive and dynamic Web language with some useful features.
Microsoft has joined the web design game as well with its own programming languages and Web application framework. ASP is the basic Web language of Microsoft. ASP.NET allows you to build more dynamic web pages on a Windows server.
Other application frameworks have entered the market as well. One popular one in recent years is the open source Ruby on Rails, which is based on the Ruby programming language. Twitter, and a few other popular websites, was built on Ruby on Rails.
So, to answer the question, how many Web languages do you need for Web design? You really only need one. But if you want to build dynamic web pages that are interactive and keep visitors coming back for more, sometimes you need to incorporate several languages into a single web design.
Why Web Design Is More Than Important
Your first impression is a big deal. And you only get a chance to make one. That’s why your web design has to be top notch, not just good.
There are three types of web design companies:
- Search engine optimizers who also do web design
- Companies that only do web design
- Companies that design killer websites that are SEOd well
While web design is important, it’s not so important that you should forget about search engine marketing. In fact, a good web design actually takes into consideration the latest SEO techniques and tactics with search engine rankings in mind.
In truth, it’s a balancing act. You balance a beautiful image with great rankings. When you play this balancing act well, it will show in increased traffic to your website and your web pages ranking for the important content you want to rank for. It’s a two-tiered system where both parts are equal.
Web design firms that only do web design can make your site look good, but they won’t get you ranked. You’ll end up having to hire an SEO company to make it rank, and sometimes your SEO company has to make changes to the website.
If you hire an SEO to do web design, then you run the risk of a site that doesn’t leave a good impression. There’s no reason you can’t have both good SEO and awesome web design.
It’s The Little Things That Count – Customized Error Pages
There are a lot of great websites that have been designed for businesses, yet many of them forget some of the simpler features that can make or break an online business. One of the simpler tasks you can do is create customized error pages. These are the pages that are shown to visitors whenever there is a problem with your site, or a problem with their search.
For potential customers, there is nothing more uninspiring than to land on a website only to see a “page not found” error, or worse, “server not found”. Think about those errors. A “server not found” error could mean you no longer exist so the visitor will look elsewhere. “Page not found” errors shouldn’t happen. This generally means the visitor has followed a link that arrives on a page that no longer exists. Either that, or the link is badly formed in the first place.
Customized error pages can actually help your visitors. When customizing, a friendly message that states the page is not available at that time while suggesting alternatives can help direct traffic further into your site. You can also place a search box prominently so the visitor can search your site for content they are looking for.
Traffic is hard to get at the best of times. The last thing you need is to waste any traffic because it is arriving on dead pages. What you should also bear in mind is that if that visitor happens to be one of the search bots, and they cannot find your site, or your pages, then this can have an effect on your position in the search results. There are many website owners who have complained bitterly about being dropped from the front page of the search results, simply because their server was out of action. From the search engine’s perspective, your page could not be found so why include it in search results?
If you are having your website professionally designed, be sure to insist on customized error pages. They can save a lot of hassles.
Anatomy Of A Modern Business Website
If you were to lift a website from ten years ago and dump it into today’s internet world, it wouldn’t cut it. Business websites of today can be complicated beasts, or at least, they may seem that way. However, a closer inspection will reveal that their anatomy is actually quite simple.
Today’s business website needs to address several factors. Get the design and mix right, and your website will be the least of your worries. So what factors does a modern website need?
Optimized for search – it goes without saying that search is still the number one source of traffic for most websites – this includes both organic, paid, and local search.
Optimized for social – optimizing for social involves a few simple modifications to a standard website. Social buttons are the first factor to consider. Allowing comments or user feedback should also be considered.
Optimized for the user - uncluttered pages, clear call-to-action triggers, easy to follow navigation, and the ability to communicate with you, the business owner, are all important user functions.
Optimized for the Internet – today’s websites need to be slick, fast, easy to follow, and fairly straightforward. Shopping baskets and checkouts need to be smooth processes that are not complicated by over form filling or confusing processes. Today’s website needs to be streamlined in the way it processes users and their data.
Optimized for information – what is the Internet all about? Information and communication. We have communication covered so all that is left is information, and for a website, that boils down to content. Relevant, unique, up-to-date, easy to read, and of value to users – content is what drives websites and its content that attracts visitors.
Does that sound too simplistic? Perhaps you are trying to over complicate what should be a straight out process. The hardest task in building a website to satisfy everything on that list is the seamless integration of each component. If your web design team can get that right, you website is ready to do business.
Does Your Website Pass The 30 Seconds Test?
They say that first impressions count, and when it comes to website design, it certainly holds true. In fact, since Google’s introduction of the web page preview option in search results, website design has probably become more important. The general theory is that you have less than 30 seconds to convince a visitor to stay on your site – that’s probably down to five seconds when it comes to Google Preview.
A quick check of your website stats will tell you how long traffic is staying on your site. If a high number of visitors stay for less than 30 seconds, and they don’t click through to other pages, then you need to start thinking about why – is it your website design that is at fault? There are a number of issues that you should be analyzing. These include:
- Overall look - does your website look too busy? One of the biggest issues that users complain about is how busy a site looks. From a user’s perspective, they just don’t know where to start.
- Navigation – is your navigation easy to understand and in plain site, or is it hidden towards the bottom of the page?
- Content - visitors come to your website because they are looking for something. Is it there in plain site, or is it hidden in amongst a myriad of ads?
- Advertising - speaking of ads, are visitors blown away by the number of ads that hit them, especially in the ‘above the fold’ section of your website?
- Friendly – how friendly is your website? Does is welcome your visitor and encourage them to stay awhile? Color, graphics, and issues like font size all play a role in making your visitor feel at ease.
While it may seem to be easier and cheaper to create your own website, the reality is often the opposite. If your website is not up to scratch, then it could be costing you money. While a professional website design team may seem costly initially, over time their work will repay you many times over. You’ve got 30 seconds to convince your visitor to stay – does your website achieve that?
Does Your Website Convert Traffic Into Customers
We spend a lot of time talking about how to increase traffic to your website, but unless you convert that traffic into customers your efforts are often wasted. I know there are some sites that want traffic purely as online branding and promotional use, but many websites exist because of the business they do through the Internet. It’s your website that converts traffic into customers and it can take a lot of research and trial and error to gain the best conversion rates.
Online business owners can learn a lot from their offline counterparts. One feature of many offline businesses is the concentration on efforts to not win walk-in traffic, but to do everything possible to keep that traffic in the store for as long as possible. Every parent knows about the final marketing trick, the offers made at the point of sale – often targeting children. I notice some supermarkets now advertise checkouts that are ‘child friendly’, that doesn’t mean they don’t have point-of-sale marketing material.
Your website needs to follow the same principles. Once a visitor arrives on your website, you need to keep them for as long as possible. The use of video is popular now for catching people’s attention and increasing their desire for your goods or services. Video production now needs to be a little more sophisticated than in the past, but then, a professionally produced video is likely to have more selling power than a home-produced video.
Content is a website’s prime tool in keeping visitors on their site. However, content on its own is useless if visitors cannot find it. This brings into play your internal link structure, the placement of those links, and the anchor text used to promote those links. This is one area where trialing different placements and different anchor text can result in improved click-through rates.
A professionally designed website that makes use of modern features like video, infographics, and well-written content can work together to keep visitors on your website for longer periods. The longer they stay on your website, the more likely they are to become a customer. When it comes to point of sale offers, don’t be afraid to ask for email details for newsletters. Is your website helping you to convert visitors to customers?
Has Your Website Design Kept Up With The Internet
Looking around at many websites, they appear to have been created two or three years ago, and never updated. The Internet continues to grow and it continues to evolve. If you were to take a snapshot today and compare it with 2006, for example, you would notice quite a few changes. So my question for you today is quite simple – has your website’s design kept up with the latest trends?
What should today’s website look like? That’s a harder question, but I do suggest you consider some of the following:
Page loading speed – How fast (or slow) do your pages load?
Social integration – Social integration goes beyond just social ‘like’ buttons. Including or linking to reviews, incorporating Twitter feeds, allowing comments and linking to sites such as Facebook all help to open up that ‘social’ aspect of your business.
Video – Video has been a major player for several years now, but it is seeing a real growth when it comes to onsite publication on small business websites.
Overall aesthetics – Google Preview allows searchers to preview your site before clicking through. How appealing is your site?
Local Search – If your business services a geographic area, then local search brings requirements of its own. Having your address and telephone number on all pages and perhaps even a local map giving directions to your business will help potential customers find you, and do business with you (they also help you rank higher in local search)
The Internet continues to evolve on an almost daily basis. While your website’s design doesn’t quite need to be updated that often, an annual review is definitely something you should consider – perhaps you could make it one of your New Years resolutions.
Is Your Business Run By A Geek Or A Marketer?
What’s the difference between a geek and a marketer? I guess there are a million answers to that question. My thoughts are fairly straightforward – a geek will tinker with code to make a page look good while a marketer will tinker with strategies that convert a page into sales. There are many online business owners that fall into the geek category – their sites look fabulous. But when it comes to marketing, forget it.
Of course, we also have to admit there are a lot of people marketing their businesses well yet their sites are letting them down because they look horrendous. Which camp do you fall into? More importantly, can you do both? Most do-it-yourself online business owners do try all with varying success. It is possible to do both, but internet marketing is becoming harder all the time. Sometimes, what is important is to understand your limitations and to concentrate on what you are good at.
In the main, online business people, if they come from a business background, are good at sourcing products, good at managing the financial aspects of their business, and often quite adept at the Internet marketing side of the business. Learning to create polished websites, while a handy skill, could actually take one away from what is the real core of their business – getting customers through the door.
Web design is one of those areas that is often best left to those who specialize in that area. Having a professional custom web design doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg either. If you were to price your own time at a reasonable rate, and apply that to what could be 20-30 hours of tinkering (if you were to do it), then a professional’s fees will look quite small in comparison. Of course, because of their skill, they can produce decent websites in far less time than most nonprofessionals.
Who is running your business? Are you a geek with a really well-polished website, or are you a marketer who knows how to get the traffic through the door? If you’re both, the best of luck to you!
Do You Still Need A Custom Design Online Store?
The cost associated with building an online store can be anything from next to nothing to thousands of dollars, depending of course on how complex it needs to be. There are alternatives that many businesses are having success with. Google and Yahoo! both offer stores and GoDaddy has a similar setup. You could opt for eBay, Amazon, or perhaps even Buy.com. The latest player that is having a huge influence is Facebook.
A number of questions spring to mind, the first being whether you need to include an online store on your site. With so many options available, wouldn’t it be better to use them instead? This is really a yes/no question since it depends on your product and who your target market is (and where they are).
Facebook is an interesting option. Being the most trafficked site on the Internet, there are potentially millions of customers just waiting for the right products – and they are shopping though Facebook. The potential for viral sales is huge – if you have the right product at the right price.
All that aside, having your own custom designed online site store hosted on your own website certainly adds more credibility to your business. The most successful online businesses are those that utilize a number of outlets, including their own, in such a way that they don’t diminish their own brand. Facebook is definitely worth investigating as are the Yahoo! and Google stores.
The best approach for your business is one that you can manage easily, helps to increase sales, and at the same time helps to promote your business.
Will Instant Preview Make Custom Web Design Crucial To Your Success?
Google have announced the introduction of ‘Instant Previews’ in search results and this could, over time, influence traffic numbers to many web sites. The feature allows users to preview the site listed in results without the need to actually visit the site. We all know how quickly web design can affect a user’s opinion of a web site. Put simply, if the user doesn’t like what they see, they will check out the next site listed in the search results. Are they going to like your web site?
All web site owners should, as a priority, check out their own web sites using the instant preview. Just enter a search for a term you know you rank highly on and click on the magnifying glass on the right of your search listing. While you’re at it, check out your competition as well. Put yourself in the shoes of an average Internet surfer – which site would you visit first?
Custom web design will become a key area in the future as web site owners try to outdo each other with striking logo designs and web pages that are easy to navigate and easy to find information on. One of the features of Instant Previews is that the section of the page where the search term exists is highlighted, placing it in context within the page itself.
What makes Instant Previews even more dangerous for those with weak designs is that a user only has to click on a magnifying glass once. From there the user only has to place the cursor over each magnifying glass to see a preview. They can quickly flip between a couple of sites before deciding on the one that suits their needs.
Logos will be important as will color and layout. The quality of your content cannot be underestimated given the focus it will receive for search terms. If you are running a business web site, have a good hard look at your web design – is it time to call in an expert to create a complete custom web design?
Of course, Instant Preview may not catch people’s attention and the effect on traffic and click-through rates could be negligible. While I wouldn’t panic just yet – I suggest you carefully watch your stats over the coming months.
Google Offers To Help Improve Page Load Speed
There are always strange things going on inside Google. One can often imagine it looking like a mad professor’s laboratory except, instead of test tubes, it’s computer geeks glued to monitors. The latest offering from Google – mod_pagespeed. As the name suggests, it’s a module designed to improve the load speed of web pages.
The need to consider page speed as a ranking algorithm is a bit of a mystery in a way. Sure, we all want the Internet to burn along at the speed of light – but page speed itself is not a measure of quality. In fact, better quality pages often take a moment longer to load than those spammy made for Adsense content rip-off sites that abound. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be constantly assessing your pages for speed issues.
Pages that have modules that rely on external sources – for example, Amazon product feeds – can be a little slower, especially if Amazon is having a slow day. You will need to assess the value of having these modules against the effect they have on page load times. There is a way around this, however, and that is to look at a page the way a user does.
Your page’s design and the code behind it should be written in such a way that the content appears as soon as possible when loading. Blogs are notorious for having a left side bar that loads before the content. That is fine as long as the content in the side bar is loaded quickly – have one of those Amazon widgets and the main content can be delayed for several seconds. The key in that situation is to move all the slow loading content to the right side bar, or to have your theme written so that the main content is loaded first.
Should you use Google’s mod_pagespeed module? You will need to check compatibility issues; for example, it will only run on Apache 2.2. You will also need to assess whether or not it really delivers any improvements in page load speeds. If it doesn’t then ask whether you really need another layer of software around your site.
How Good Is Your Site Search Engine?
One of the most under estimated assets a web site can have is a fast and accurate site search engine. First impressions count when it comes to web sites, but that first impression can sour quickly if a visitor cannot find what they are looking for. While a well defined navigation menu is important, users are becoming sophisticated and rather than scrolling through a category to find information, they are quite happy to type it into your search window – if you have one.
That is the first big mistake made by web designers – not including at least a very basic site search capability. The second mistake they make is to hide the search window, often buried down near the bottom of the page. Having site search can make a huge change to your site’s performance. Some of the benefits include:
Reducing bounce rates – visitors only have to click through to another page and they are considered not to have bounced.
Increasing page views – a search box enables visitors to find more content related to their needs, thus increasing the number of page views.
Increasing conversions – a simple rationale – the longer a visitor stays on your site, the more opportunities there are to catch their attention. They may not convert today, however, there will be a brand impression left on them and a return visit probable.
Developing authority – the greater the amount of quality content that a visitor is exposed to, the more they will value your site.
Increase brand awareness – the longer a visitor is on your site, the more often they will see your logo, your business name, and the branding details of your site. The more often they see it, the more it will imprint on their memories.
It’s a very simple principle. Make your content easy to find, and your visitors will appreciate it. Make it hard to find and they will find it elsewhere. If you’re a business then you cannot afford to have that potential customer walk away. Be sure your web design includes a well placed site search engine in its web design – your visitors will most likely be looking for it.
How Web Design Relates To SEO
Most website design elements do not help you with search engine marketing, but that doesn’t mean that some elements of web design can’t help you. There is evidence that paying attention to website design elements can improve your chances of ranking in the search engines.
The most talked about example of web design and SEO is the use of Flash presentations. While Flash is beginning to be a crawlable element now, this is still a brand new development where search engines are concerned. That means the crawlability of Flash is still limited. I would not build a website that is created entirely with Flash elements.
Other things to consider with web design and SEO are:
- Placement of excessive links in your footer
- The use of excessive code
- Navigation elements
- Using alt tags with graphic and photo elements
- Hidden links and redirects can hurt you in the rankings
- Use an inverted pyramid style for information and presentation elements
- Use external files as much as possible for extraneous code like JavaScript
There are many more ways that web design can affect SEO. You would be doing yourself a favor to learn and study SEO and web design to some reasonable degree before you build your website.
Does Blog Design Matter?
At this juncture in Web history it is pretty commonplace for a business to own at least one blog. I think it will someday be commonplace for many businesses to some day own and operate several blogs. As the Web becomes more and more competitive, there will be more websites and blogs targeting specific niches, and niches within niches. That will undoubtedly make the search and social marketing stakes go higher.
One of the points of differentiation for any business with a website is design. Not only can it distinguish you from the competition, but it can also brand you, your company, and your products. Blog design, of course, is no different.
It has already been established that blog design is important. But does it matter for each blog? Does every blog have to have its own unique design, or can a company have a branded look to which each blog and website under the corporate umbrella must conform? My answer is, of course, yes.
Yes, to both. Either is acceptable.
When deciding on a design look for your blog, keep in mind your company goals. If you want all of your Web properties to have a consistent look for branding effect then that’s an easy decision. But if you want each blog to have its own design and branded look then you’ll have to make some hard decisions for each. Either way can be effective. You just have to narrow down your ideals.