Author: David

Categories
Web Design

Don’t let creativity take over your web design

You may think that being creative is a great skill to have as a web designer and that you can never be too creative, but you may be wrong. Yes, it is important to have a creative streak and know what works and what doesn’t but being over creative can take away from the main purpose of the website.

It is important to understand you are not just designing websites that you like or even your client likes, but for the users of the website. There is no point in having a flashy quirky web design that puts your visitors off and does not convert visitors in to sales or enquiries.

Research shows that people make their aesthetic judgment on your design in less than 50 milliseconds and that first impression can tell them if they want to stay or leave the site.

Users like websites that look clean and simple and also have some familiarity about them.

For example, on a blog website you would expect to see a sign up box somewhere on the top right hand side. When someone visits your site, this is the first place they are going to look for it and a percentage of people may not bother or leave the site if they cannot see it instantly and where they expect it to be.

Categories
Web Marketing

Making sure you build a responsive website

Responsive websites are extremely important as they need to be built to adapt to the device in which it is being view on. With many people now using phones and tablets, it is vital that your website displays and functions correctly on a number of different screen sizes.

If you already have a website and it is not responsive then you may be able to get a programmer to alter it for you, but this may be costly as its not always an easy change and may require many elements changing to get it all to work. If your site uses a theme from somewhere such as WordPress or Drupal then you can often find responsive themes which can be uploaded to the server. You can then swap your website over to use the new theme, but you still may need to do a few changes to get it to look as it should.

Google has actually started to use this as part of their algorithm (along with a number of other items) and is favouring responsive sites over non responsive ones to allow them to give the visitor the best possibly experience.

 

Categories
Web Design

Taking on too much work as a programmer

We all want to make as much money as possible and it can be very easy to take on more work than you can actually manage. If you are a self-employed programmer or run your own business, you need to carefully consider if you have the time and knowledge to take on a project before you agree to it.

Website projects can vary drastically from a simple brochure site to a fully-fledged ecommerce site that will be a lot more complex to build.

If you are only just starting out, then it may be worth doing a few smaller projects first to see how you get on with them and to check that your costing structure works and is accurate.

If you do take on a project and then realise that you can’t manage you either need to find someone that you can pass the work on to that is reliable or you will need to tell the customer that you can no longer work on. The son you can sort this out, the better.

You can always do online or classroom training courses to further your understanding and ability in areas such as design and programming.

 

Categories
Web Marketing

It’s all about the conversions

Many businesses make the mistake of focusing entirely on getting traffic (in other words, visitors) to their website and do not stop to consider if the website is designed in such a way that it will convert visitors in to enquiries or sales. There really is little point in having thousands of visitors if your products or services are not competitive or if your website does not offer the information they need.

If you have an ecommerce website then ideally you want your visitors to make a purchase on the site, with other types, such as brochure sites, you may be wanting the visitor to call or email you enquiring about a product or service you offer. Whatever type of site you have, it is all about the conversions.

When looking at what should be on your website, have a look at a few competitor’s sites. See what they offer, how they detail the information and if possible what prices they charge. This will give you an idea of the level of competition that you are up against. You can then tailor this information to your business and check that firstly you are competitive and secondly that you are giving the correct information to your visitors in order for them to complete the purchase or enquiry etc.

 

Categories
Web Design

Steps to becoming a great website programmer

As a website programmer, you are not required by law to have any qualifications, but some companies do ask applicants to have some sort of qualifications such as computer science or design and programming. Many programmers are self-taught or learn on the job as this is often the best way to pick up programming techniques and skills. Many employers look more at the experience a programmer has got rather than qualifications when it comes to offering job opportunities.

You can chose to do a computer programming course at college or university which will teach you a good overview of many different programming languages. If you continue on to become a web developer then you may find that you only ever program in one particular language anyway so this is not always necessary.

You can start off as a programmer by editing code that has already been written. Often then you can quickly advance to writing your own code and building websites from scratch. Some of the more advanced programmers even write their own content management systems.

 

Categories
Web Marketing

How can you constantly add new and relevant content to your website?

There are many things you should be doing to your website in order to improve and maintain search engine rankings on the search engines such as Google and Bing. One of the items that they look for is that your website is updated regularly with relevant and fresh content. This content cannot just be taken from another site and uploaded on to yours, it needs to be different.

Many businesses struggle to think how they can add new content to the site without cluttering up the main pages. There are a few ways in doing so but the most popular is to add a blog or a news section.

Adding a blog will not only allow you an easy way to add new content but may build up your returning visitor count as people will come back to read new articles that you have added since they last visited. It is often quite easy to add a blog to your site especially if your site using a content management system such as WordPress.

A news section is also a good way to get new content on you site. You could have a news section for news about the business or you could have an industry news section or maybe even both as long as you have time to update them.