As a web designer your role is to make the website you are asked to design as attractive to potential clients as possible in order that they will stay on the site long enough to consider using the business services or buy their products. The initial impression of the website gives the visitor an insight into the business and its ethos so it is essential that as a web designer you choose the best images on the home page to convey the business in a positive light.
When you are choosing images or photographs to use on the website, be sure to only use images that are copyright free unless you are happy to pay for the right to use them.
Stock image sites often charge a one-off fee for their images whilst other sites charge for each single use or charge you a fixed price to allow you to use the images for a certain time.
Using images that are in the public domain or those that have a creative commons license is a more cost-effective option as these can be used freely.
Alternatively the business can use their own images as this is a good way to give visitors a more personal inside view into the business location and meet the staff however the images used should be of good quality so it is wise to employ a photographer to take the images that are going to be uploaded.
Category: Web Design
The job of a website programmer is to create the code that makes a website look and function as it should. You have a certain level of responsibility to ensure that when you program websites, you do it in the correct manner. This is not only from a functionality point of view but also from a security perspective as you need to ensure that the code and methods you are using are secure and have been created with security in mind. This is particularly important when it comes to ecommerce sites and on these sites you will be taking personal details such as address, phone numbers and even payment details from a card or Paypal account etc. This data must be handled in the correct way and each website that does this must be complaint with the latest standards.
If the security is breached on a website, personal data may be stolen, the website content may be changed or the website taken down entirely.
To ensure that you are up to date with all of the latest technological advances in programming it is advised that you either attend regular courses or ensure you do your own in depth research.
Marketing is an important part of any business model and it is becoming essential for any successful business to have a web presence both in terms of a website and on social media platforms. With the cost of paying a professional web designer out of many small business owners reach some decide to try their hand at designing and setting up their own website.
There are plenty of tutorials online to help the novice designer and so it is a good idea to spend some time before you start watching these and collating ideas. Look at examples of websites that impress you to get a notion of what you want your site to offer and to compare layouts.
When you are ready to begin your design, many sites offer templates to get you started. These can be customised to your business with your brand name and logo. Next your content can be uploaded including photographs and text. Built in SEO tools enable your site to be visible when potential clients search online for your company which is invaluable.
Keeping your website up to date is usually straight forward on these sites and any customer support can be accessed through online chat.
If you own a web design / programming company or are a freelance web design / programmer, then you should understand the importance of content. Content is king when it comes to websites and marketing as not only can it help persuade the reader to enquire or buy etc, but it can also help get you further up the rankings on Google or other search engines.
As a programmer or a designer, you may not really have much interest in writing copy for sites. Sometimes the client will write the copy and provide it to you to upload, but other times they may ask you to do this.
To be able to write the content to go on their website you may need to interview them to find out a bit more about what they offer. Ideally the person that writes the copy should have a good knowledge of SEO (search Engine Optimisation) to ensure that it is written in such a way that it will improve the SEO on their site. If there is no one within the business who has these skills then it may be time to look at outsourcing the copywriting to someone who is experienced in writing SEO friendly content.
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What to include in your first website
If you have not got a website at present and are looking to have one created, it can be easy to get carried away with the amount of functions and gadgets you can add in to it. Each time you add something new to your site, it will most likely incur and additional cost. If budget is limited then you may want to create a list of the essential items you need to have on the site and then the additional ones that you would like to have if budget allows.
When taking to your designer and programmer, be honest about the money you have to spend and explain to them what the main purpose of the site is. If it is to sell products online then the checkout process will need to be straight forward and easy to use. If it is to gain enquiries then you need to make sure you have plenty of opportunities to add in call to action banners and buttons.
Always ask the designer to create a visual of a few of the pages so you can see what it is going to look like before they start to build it for you. This will allow you to make any changes at an early stage hopefully without creating too many additional costs.
Your navigation bar on your website is of utmost importance. It is the place most people will go to when looking for something on your site. It is often positioned along the top of the site so people can quickly go from page to page to find what they are looking for. Moving the navigation to a different position can be potentially damaging to your website visits as you may find that people struggle to know where to go on the site and end up leaving.
If you find you have far too many buttons that need to go on the navigation, rather than splitting it on to two lines which can look messy and may not display well on all devices, think about how you can group them. If you have a tab for each of your services, then see if you can split them into one or more group to shrink the space needed on the nav bar. It may be that some of your services are for businesses and other consumers. If this is the case then you may have the main business and consumer buttons with dropdowns for the services within those categories.
Having the navigation move down the page as you scroll can be another relatively simple but effective technique. It allows visitors to navigate quickly without having to keep scrolling back up. This is ideal for sites with longer pages.