Sharing knowledge is my passion. Few basics of web designing will help all of us have quality presence on the Internet space.
You may be on your FIRST website. But more likely you’re faced with redesigning a Website that isn’t functioning as well as it should. You’re the owner or marketing director of a small business and know that getting your website to pull its share of the load is vital for success. But your budget is severely limited. You’ve just been assigned the task of redoing your company’s website. Congratulations.
You’ve volunteered to take on a website and make some sense out of it – without offending the person who built it in the first place. This time around you’ve decided to outsource the job, but you have no idea of how to supervise a design company to make sure it does what you need. Good luck!
Website’s chief purpose: Decide and define your vision and mission, Build your brand that is branding, provide product information, Sell advertising, Sell products or services directly over the Internet, Earn affiliate commissions for sales and leads, Provide customer service and support and save money are few purposes. Decide what is yours.
Decide Whether to Outsource or Do It Yourself: Designer should be HTML savvy, have Graphic design experience and good artistic taste, decide Website navigation design and implementation, CGI and database programming, JavaScript and Flash programming and you must have Marketing and business experience.
Divide Your Website into Logical Sections like Home Page also called as landing page, About us page, Products & Services page, News & Media page, What’s new page, Contact us page, Slide show page, Careers page, Review page, Thank you page, Guest book page etc. Remember to maintain directories and nomenclature tactfully.
Develop a Site Navigation System & Build Basic Webpage Templates likeTop, Banner, Menu, Bottom and Right. It is advisable to avoid frames while building professional website. However, many educational institutes are still using frames.
Give Your Website an Attractive’Look and Feel’: Website should look good and professional. You owe it to yourself to make your website look top notch. To succeed, you’ll need some artistic flair, or perhaps you should hire a graphic designer’s talents for the basic design and site graphics. Photographs contribute to the classy, professional look. Photos can be very effective on business websites. Some graphic designers like to build sites with lots of graphics. Try to keep your homepage to 60K maximum, counting the file sizes of all the graphics and the HTML. Avoid broken links or dead links. Avoid spelling mistakes and grammar. Avoid unnecessary hyperlinks.
Construct Your Site to Be Search Engine Friendly: Make each Webpage a search engine siren: In Greek mythology, human female creatures called Sirens lured mariners with their singing. Your web pages ought to entice search engine spiders or robots to index your site. Each webpage you construct needs to contain the following elements. Note the careful placement of keywords, the search words people would use to find this particular webpage. Title, Meta tags, Headlines, Body text, Hyperlink text and filenames should be carefully placed.
Write and Fine-tune Focused Content Pages: Remember, Content is the king today. While creating web pages we must have copywriter with knowledge of Internet technologies.
Incorporate Customer Communication Systems: Websites are two-way, interactive communication systems. The better the communication, the more trust increases, and customers feel comfortable to do business with you. Contact page should include contact information, name, address, phone number, etc. Contact us response form should includes fields that ask for your visitor’s name, contact information and question or comment.
Create and Test Effective Sales Pages: Whatever is your Most Wanted Results, MWR, you must work to optimize responses. Good sales pages result in a high ratio of sales to visitors - called the "conversion rate." A good site might have a conversion rate of 3% to 5%, some higher and many lower. Over the past few years, marketers have developed the art of increasing the conversion rate. This is especially important when you are purchasing Pay Per Click(PPC) ads to drive traffic to your site. Your profit is closely related to CPC and conversion rate of the "landing page, " That is, the sales page to which you direct interested shoppers. To increase your conversion rate to the maximum, you must carefully track sales percentages for each product your sell. Then make incremental changes to the landing page or the order system and see if the conversion rate rises or falls. Over a period of careful study and change, you’ll maximize your sales. So, set up an ordering system(e-commerce capability) to add to your credibility.
Conduct Usability Trials and Incorporate Changes: Ask a friend who has started surfing Internet recently. Seat him in front of a computer, stand near him, and direct him to your site. Tell him that you’d like him to talk out loud to you about what he is thinking and the questions that occur to him. Now watch and take notes. Observe what confuses him. See where he gets hung up. Listen to his questions. After 10 or 15 minutes of this exercise, you’ll detect plenty of small changes to make. You’ll also learn how effective your navigation system is. To discover 85% of the usability problems on your site, repeat the usability exercise a total of five times, each time, of course, with a different person who can look at your site through completely new eyes.
Note: With ever changing technologies, business dynamics and individual needs, above article should be considered as basics only. Getting web designed is good beginning but success lies in its marketing.