Web Design Development Articles

Website Design V Website Design.

How to get the best out of your design company.

Now, you might be asking what do I mean by Website Design Versus Website Design how can you compare the same thing to itself?

It is a problem I have been mulling over for a while. Let me explain…

In the world of design and the graphic arts you will often find a that a graphic designer spends a lot of time thinking about fonts, colours, layout, imagery and look and feel and this is called graphic design. A graphic designer will read the latest design magazines, they will look at other websites they will absorb information and start to instinctively know what is ‘in’ at the moment, design usually follows trends.

For a lot of websites, especially what you might call brochure sites (ie they do not actually sell a product) this is fine. If you have an experienced designer who knows his onions you should end up with a good looking product that portrays and sells your company online at its best and that is all you need. (always check a designers portfolio before going ahead with anything)

The problem arises when the designer has finished your super trendy, up to the minute cutting edge website and you find that even though the SEO company is doing it’s job, the hits are up people are coming to the site. You are not making any sales!!

Why is this?

Well this is where another type of Website design comes in. This is the testing and human interface design. Take another look at your web site. It looks the bees knees, the designer has explained to you in carefull detail why he chose that particular font, why he picked that certain background colour and the philosophy of that image across the page, but it ‘ain’t working!!

This is because there is a whole other world of design out there that encompass how people react to certain elements on a website. Colours, fonts, wording, even where the freephone number is, how they use the website and what stops them making a sale.

Website design has come a long way in the last 15 years. From simple text based pages, through to text with small images and so on. Many of the early websites were designed by programmers, then by designers with an experience of print design only.

Remember ‘entry pages’ ie ‘Welcome to XYZ company, click to enter our website’. This is the earliest example of people realising that Web design had different needs to traditonal design. Entry pages came from the tradition of book covers. Book covers were there to advertise the product but primarily to keep your pages clean. You do not need to keep your web pages clean. Combined with the ‘less clicks the better’ rule, designers soon started to drop the entry page to allow you to get straight down to the business of buying.

Same thing occured with the advent of Flash based websites. It was soon realised that people did not want to watch a 2 minute movie of a cartoon plane spelling out the company name, they wanted to book flights!! So flash was dropped from entry pages, but has since reappeared and is used more to enhance rather than to entertain.

To be unfair to designers, they are there to make things look pretty. This is not true of all designers and you need to choose the type of designer that is suitable for the job at hand. If you want a designer that can create a stunning looking printed brochure that makes steel girders or kitchen work surfaces look sexy that is one thing. If you want a designer that can create a press ad that will get people flocking to your car dealership over the Valentines weekend, then that is another. You need to decide what you want to achieve with your website initially. You then need to test all aspects of the site design to find out what does and does not work.

Hopefully this article will give you a little ammunition and knowledge to be able to ask the right questions of a web design company, so that from the outset you know where you want to end up.

There are a huge number of web design companies on the web market offering their services and struggling for our attention. But we are not so naive as to think that all they are good at designing. Of course only some of them can satisfy our needs and demands. It is always a challenge to find a good and professional web design team. First of all, you must take into account not only general look and feel of your website but also the effectiveness of it. A Web-design Company in Birmingham investigating this given topic has come to some conclusions. With regards to this I hope that the listing below helps you.

1. Define you initial goals.

Firstly you must realise the general idea of your website as well as the audience you are targeted at. Then make a list of primary tasks and requirements you want to achieve. After analysing profoundly and thoroughly all these points start to look for a suitable web designing company that can satisfy all your needs and requirements.

2. When you are absolutely sure what you want to do and how your site will look, then it is high time to do deep research regarding design companies in order to choose the best company. If you do not know any company, navigate the internet; ask your friends, colleagues, and make the research. Create a rich data base of the web design companies, then call them in or visit them thus you will make your own balanced opinion and the right decision.

3. Next thing is portfolio.

Company’s portfolio is a very important and useful thing. Put your attention to the company’s portfolio and examine it well. It will give you again an opportunity to make the right decision about a particular company. What does a portfolio represent? A portfolio shows the previous works and projects of the company, It is its showpiece showing its work their experience and work approach. Website design is not just a programming or a science; it is art form in itself. Also a good portfolio demonstrates what kind of projects has been undertaken by the company, the number of projects, their clients etc. Portfolio reveals a very important thing- company’s style and capability.

4. Website development. Once the web design company is selected you must draw your attention to one considerable point. The process of web development is rather complex and it consists of many phases. The company must take the responsibility of this process as well as show experience and proficiency in performing it. In other words, the company should have a strong management team in order to gather all aspects and components of the web development process into one final deliverable that is the web site. A chaotic development will not lead to a successful result.

5. Safe and secure. Security is the most important factor. Due to the fact that building a site you provide a web design company with private information, they have to protect all confidential info. Also a website company is normally obliged to sign a Non- Disclosure Agreement with you for your protection.

6. Admin area. This area is designed for you, from it you are able to add updates to your site, change info, make some content updates, add or delete pictures etc. The admin area like the main site must be designed with simple and clean navigation in mind.

You should now be familiar just with the common and wide spread best parameters and practices in choosing the perfect web design Birmingham company for creating a successful site.

You might not realize it but color has a huge impact on our perception of everyday life. Think of your mood on a sunny day compared to a cloudy day. How you feel in a yellow sweater compared to black. Different colors generate different emotions in people. Marketers have been using colors for years to derive certain emotions from customers.

Color combinations on business websites can have a greater impact than you realize. Great business web design with appropriate colors can work for your business or against it. So where do you begin? What colors will help and what colors will hurt the business web design of your website? What colors produce what emotions and how can you use them to your benefit.

Yellow: joy, happiness, optimism, intelligence

Blue: peaceful, calming, harmonious, confidence

Red: strength, anger, aggression, power

Black: modernity, elegance, mystery, style

Grey: stability, wisdom, respect, humility

Orange: energy, enthusiasm, happiness, balance

Purple: enlightenment, nobility, spirituality, creativity

Who are your customers and what are they looking for? With all business web design you must determine who you want to visit your site before you develop it. You must determine what mind set your customer is in to determine what colors you would like to use on your business website. Will the colors you choose frighten your customer away with a headache or invite and comfort them into a long visit on your business website.

Once you choose the colors most appropriate for your business website, how will you use them? The most successful business websites have their text in black on a white background. Think of the readability of your content. You want the visitor to your business website to be able to easily read the information you have posted or you would not have posted it. Colored text and colored backgrounds can be more difficult to read and may push away visitors to your business website.

As always, there are exceptions to the rule. If you have certain keywords you want to stand out highlighting them with a complementary color might be a good idea. This will help catch your visitors attention. You only have three seconds to catch the attention of a visitor to your site. Time is money in the business world and most website visitors will scan articles before they take the time to read the whole text. Highlighting keywords in complementary colors may increase the chances catching a visitors attention. Once you have caught that visitors attention your ideally, will turn them into a customer.

“Site conversion” is a very dry and unexciting way of saying “how to get more profits from the same amount of website traffic.” Isn’t that a more upbeat way of expressing it? Who doesn’t want to get more profits from the same number of visitors?

Increasing your conversion rate is a straightforward, even dramatic way of positively impacting your bottom line. It really cannot be emphasized too much that any increase at all in your conversion rate means additional revenue that is total profit.

Remember this fact when you are told that the way to “make more money” is to invest in more traffic-generating schemes (and dreams, at times). Before you start spending more money to generate additional traffic, you need to do as much as you can with the traffic you are already getting. If you keep the horse ahead of the cart in your planning, you will have an efficient, stable, measurable conversion rate from which you can extrapolate x amount of additional profit from y amount of new-traffic generation.

The following tips are not in any particular order (except for #1), and can be modified and reordered to suit your particular situation. Take ownership of the change and improvement, and make sure everyone involved understands the importance of maximizing every revenue source, beginning with the existing ones!

#1: Before you can repair or improve something, you have to have a good way of measuring where you are, what you’re doing, where you’re going, etc. You can sign up for a free Google Analytics account and use other low- and no-cost tools to develop your “analytics” and “metrics” - essentially fancy words that tell you how you’re doing with numbers.

#2: Create landing pages that are both keyword- and campaign-specific. Try separating any related pay-per-click keywords into smaller and tighter groups, and then create the landing pages for each of those new subgroups. Conversions will almost certainly be better if keywords, advertising approaches and landing pages are thematically related and tightly integrated.

#3: Test different headlines and copy writing. This might be the most effective way of quickly showing improvements. Therefore, you need to write compelling copy or find someone else who can do it for you. There is plenty of free advice about this (much of it worth every penny you pay for it), but the importance of copywriting as it affects site conversions cannot possibly be overstated. This is key.

#4: It is very important to test your pricing, as it really does make a huge difference in conversions. If your goal is to maximize customer value, then the highest converting price may not actually be the optimal one. In other words, if you raise your price by 50% and only see a 10% reduction in conversions, you will more than compensate for the drop. Going the other direction, if you lower the price 15% and this doubles or triples your ratio, your increase compensates for your price reduction. Test your prices, and test them in both directions.

#5: Website load time has become an oft-overlooked item in this age of “broadband everywhere.” Load time is critically important in reducing your “bounce rate” on landing pages. There are various online services that will measure your load speed (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze), and when you know what it is, you can reduce it by compressing images, removing redundant items, optimizing your style sheets (CSS) and HTML code, and so on. The referenced website will also give you advice on other ways to improve your site’s load speed.

#6: Clearly identify the sales path(s) and remove any points of resistance, or bottlenecks. Even if you have just a single product, there may be a number of different “paths” that lead to a sale. Perhaps you have a landing page to acquire visitor contact data, which then takes them to a sales page, thence to an order page, and so on. Check your metrics and analytics carefully and you should start seeing patterns in how your visitors navigate your site. If you can see when, where and how visitors are leaving the site, you can delete unnecessary steps, enhance the sales copy or the “call to action,” insert a few testimonials, emphasize your warranty or something else to capture that business. Do everything you can to keep the sales process simple and straightforward. The less confusing it is, the less resistance visitors will display.

#7: Let your praises come from others’ lips. Sometimes talking about oneself can sound egotistical, and it has been clearly proven that third-party testimonials increase conversions. In marketing it is called “social proof” when you bring in statements and assessments from other to buttress your message. If you add testimonials - short blurbs, highlighted quotes, letters - to your various landing pages, sales pages and even shopping cart pages, you will almost invariably notice an increase in your conversion rate.

#8: You need to understand the mind of your market, and your customer’s experience with your website. Place an order on the site yourself as you step into the mind of a first-time visitor. Identify the hang-ups, inefficiencies and confusing or missing components that hinder your conversions. In concert with step #6 above, you want to identify why you are not converting, so that you can make the necessary improvements, whatever they may be, to increase your ratio.

#9: Some people believe passionately in the power of media on landing, sales and order pages to increase conversions considerably. Others are not convinced, and there is not much hard data from controlled studies to consult. You should consider testing this idea yourself. You should try pages both with and without automatic play engaged. The idea is to lower buyer resistance, and if media helps, all the better. Music, motion graphics and video do add life and personality to your website, but there is a “sweet spot” (balancing point) and the fact remains that different age and cultural groups respond differently to the media. You need to make changes here in the context of your site’s demographics. You wouldn’t put rock music on your page of ladies’ perfumes, probably - unless you have a 20-something demographic and it’s a signature fragrance from U2 or some other chart-topping band.

Aren’t most of these lists called the “top 10″ this or that? You can count this tip as a bonus, then: Keep track of everything you do! Nothing “goes without saying” anymore, so you are hereby reminded that all your hard work can go for naught if you do not keep good records of what changes you are making, when, where, why and how. Chart your progress, review it regularly and don’t be afraid to make continuing refinements as you move along your strategic path.

Finally, as a “super bonus tip” - use some kind of sales accelerator, “offer intensifier” or other method to move people faster through the sales process. It could be a special “one time” or “limited time” offer, a limited quantity offer or even a “special event” promotion. Research what’s going on at other sites in your industry and others, and stay abreast of what seems to be working. Add your own creativity to the mix, tailor things to your company’s situation and you should start seeing increased conversion rates in short order.

If you are thinking about pursuing a career in Web Design, there are important web design tools and applications available that you will need to learn how to use. There are important new web design tools and applications available for web designers to use to create web sites which include some of the following programs and languages discussed in this article.

Dreamweaver is the leading website development tool. This Web authoring tool from Macromedia gives developers a graphical interface used for creating web pages.

Photoshop is a powerful professional quality digital imaging tool is from Adobe, and it is used for image editing and graphics.  You can work very fast, with html shortcuts and many other tools. The program is so popular and widely used that it’s name has become a verb, as in “Photoshop this”.

Flash is used for high quality animation, it is Flash for fast design, downloads, and simple interactivity.  This software will allow the user to create web design animation programs that fit the full screen, or can be scaled for a browser window.

HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language.  It allows creation of a Web page through text-based information, including links, headings, lists, paragraphs and more, and to integrate interactive forms such as embedded images and object.  Text is surrounded by specific pairs of angle brackets. Embedded scripting language can be included.

PHP is a web design language that gives developers the ability to create dynamic content that will interact with databases.  It is frequently used with MySQL.

MY SQL is a management system for relational databases.  It stores information for web design data separately rather than in one large table, which increases speed.  SQL is an acronym for Structured Query Language.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) and PERL (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language) are programming languages that work together for scripting and processing data from HTML forms.  It is used to update user accounts, synchronizing databases, generating reports, and more.

.Net Framework from Microsoft is a programming model that allows users to build applications that are visually stunning, and give the user of the website seamless and secure communication.  It is designed to work with Windows programs.

Visual Studio is another program form Microsoft and this is used to develop console and graphical user interface applications.  It includes a code editor and debugger.  It has built-in design tools, including one for forms, websites and databases.  It can support virtually any programming language.

Using these tools and languages can make designing your website easier and give it a very professional look. It will be well worth your time to learn them.

In web design, a person needs to know how to create and arrange the pages that comprise a website. A good web designer must know how to balance the look and the functionality of the page. He is responsible for creating websites that are accessible to the users irrespective of the device used by them. Web design refers to the process of putting together a website starting from its conception to online publication. Web designing involves everything from technical proficiency to interpersonal communications. There are various facets to the profile. You can expect to learn a lot in this role.

How To Become A Web Designer?

If you want to have a bright career in web design, you must have a degree in Computer Science or E-Commerce. You might opt for an advanced degree of web designing. There are designers who do not have any advanced degree in web design but are self learners. They have developed their designing skills on their own. If you do not have advanced degree in web designing, you can also do a short internship with a web designing firm to get some practical experience. Hands on experience will also help you get the job easily.

Web designers need to have good communication skills. They should know how to explain various issues in different languages. They need to be able to translate ideas into action. Web designers need to be updated with the latest trends in their profession. They should be technically sound as well as creative. They must know how to manage time and meet strict deadlines. This can be a bit challenging as it does become difficult to maintain a strict deadline and yet be creative.

Career Path Of A Web Designer

As a web designer, you can grow in ranks within the function itself. You can also rise within a marketing communications function. It is up to you and your aptitude and expertise on how far you rise and at what speed. Some people confuse web designers with web developers. But both are completely different. A developer usually works on the server side development and web server security. If you are interested in becoming a web developer from a web designer, then you would need to learn additional programming languages as well as methodologies like Object Oriented design and Java programming.

The job market for web designers is quite lucrative. Companies need to project themselves in an attractive manner in order to stay ahead of competition. So they hire web designers to project a favorable image for the company in the virtual space. Web designers are needed in all sectors. Everybody needs websites to attract new business and retain the existing one. If you want, you can even freelance for various companies instead of working for a single one. This way, you can get better exposure and income. Web design as a career can be quite lucrative if you stay on the right track.