Know your crowd
Every product/service has a target audience. Now design your website for your target audience and not for yourself or the web designer. Your visitors should be able to relate to the website if they want to buy your products.

Clarity and brevity
They usually go hand in hand to make understanding easier. Your links should state exactly where they are taking the visitor. Nobody likes running around in circles. Pause and think like your user at every page and link. If you feel the user ‘should be able to figure it out’, then changes are probably in order. Brevity is the key to keeping your visitor’s attention, so avoid rambling descriptions of your product and stick to the essentials.

Make payment easier in every way
You’ve been quite successful in your design if you got the customer to make it to the counter. But many websites manage to lose their customer even there. It simply goes to prove that most customers would like to move on fast. So avoid gathering pages of personal information and feedback and get right to the point. You can offer various modes of payment as well to encourage customers who are not comfortable using their credit cards.

More information
Knowing more about you will help your customer trust you. Providing an office address instead of a P.O. box number can certainly gain their trust. A phone number for enquiries will also help. Make sure you list your timings as well to avoid disappointing any callers.

Be honest
Answer enquiries via emails and telephone calls honestly and directly instead of hiding behind company policies and offering murky explanations. If you do not have sufficient stock for a large order, then say so. Do not assure your customer that he can get the rest after a week’s time if it is not possible.

Offer unique experiences
Is there something novel about your services that could keep your customers coming back for more? For instance, you can show a selection of gift wrapping options if your customer wants to have a gift delivered. It’s is simply no good to have a website that just looks great and is equipped with latest shopping cart, it has to sell and make buying seem easy. If you get your conversion right, your website could show a better turnover than your store.

The post Is Your Website Designed For Conversion? appeared first on Web Design Newcastle, Digital Design Agency Newcastle upon Tyne. NE1 1SG. UK.

After all, the reason you have a website is to expose your business to a broader audience, attract more clients, and grow your enterprise. You need someone who understands web design & development and who will take the time to understand your needs and goals and then work with you to achieve them.

Many site designers believe that delivering a product is a onetime thing – publish your site and we’re done. At one time, that may have been true; anyone with a little HTML knowledge or a software package could throw together a respectable web page. To be competitive today, you need someone that understands modern web design, navigation, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and social networking. You should choose a company that is high in ranking for searches such as ‘Web Design (insert your nearest city or town), as if they are able to reach first page for this kind of competitive search then they will be able to build you a site that does well in searches also. For intance we come first page (within the top 4) for the search of Web Design proving we know what we are doing with regards to SEO as this search is highly competitive and therefore harder to acheive first page.

Thorough knowledge of SEO alone sets a good website designer apart from the competition. Think about the last time you did an Internet search. Did you dig down to the 4th or 5th page to find what you were looking for? Neither will your potential clients!

They also won’t click on a site just because it’s first or has the biggest link. You want the right people coming to your site for the right reasons; otherwise it’s just wasted traffic. This requires a thorough knowledge and experience in SEO and how it fits into web design.

Social media is another area where a good website designer shines. It’s not just about knowing how to tweet or liking someone’s page. Having the experience to use the myriad of social networking media to market your site and create buzz about you and your company – that’s the real value of social networking.

If you haven’t even started with a web presence, there’s no time like the present. You need a company that offers domain registration, hosting, support & SEO as well. We can help you through the entire experience from choosing a useful domain name, web design & development, and all the way through to the finished site, and then continue working with you to achieve your goals.

The post Choosing a Web Designer appeared first on Web Design Newcastle, Digital Design Agency Newcastle upon Tyne. NE1 1SG. UK.

Most of these businesses have at least a viable plan for utilizing the power of the web. There are websites that offer entertainment and earn revenue from advertising. Some sites offer waress and services for sale or provide access to information sources for small fees. The options are as inexhaustible as an entrepreneur’s imagination.

This article is intended to help the small, local business make the best use of the web for improving the local customer base upon which the business depends. A small niche restaurant, local flower shop, bakery or auto repair center does not have anything to sell directly to website visitors. In most cases these businesses have nothing to offer to anyone outside their community and do not need to advertise outside that small locale.

Almost everyone has some vague idea that a website is a good thing. People have their own personal sites or pages and there are few businesses that have not been approached by web designers offering to build a site for them. Many have paid for a web site and in truth have a tiny presence on the web. Very few reap any reward from the expense of setting up a simple site and even fewer ever make an effort to follow-up on the potential that a web site has for growing a business.

Here are 7 relatively easy techniques for making the best of a small business website.

Advertise the website as a major part of your regular advertising.
Almost all small businesses will have an advertising budget. The website URL should be included in all advertising. It should be mentioned in radio and television ads and featured prominently in print ads. Give the prospective customer some reason to visit the site by announcing discounts or other online specials in conventional adverts .

Use the site to develop a mailing list email and/or regular mail
When visitors come to the website there should be some incentive to get them to give you their contact information. A mailing list is a very powerful advertising tool. The cost of a discount coupon or some product being offered as a prize in a drawing can be paid back quickly with a large focused mailing list. This mailing list is then used to announce weekly specials or new products or services.

Keep the site content fresh – weekly updates and specials.
Web users nowadays have learned to expect entertainment and fresh content from the websites they visit. Content can be reviews of new products, local stories about the winners of the prize giveaways on the site, videos, or almost any visual content with entertainment value. It is important that this content be updated often to keep visitors coming back to see what’s new.

Offer regular specials exclusively for site visitors.
There should be some special offers available to website visitors only. The print ads and any on-site posters should announce the fact that website visitors have special access to specials. The idea is to get your customers to visit the site and join the mailing lists. A local business will benefit greatly from a focused local mailing list.

Keep the site modern
Modern websites are dynamic and personal. Use the tools available to web programmers to establish direct communication with each return visitor. Combining a simple database with a visitor registration form and cookies will allow the site to greet each return visitor by name. The visitor’s recent history and preferences can be saved. It is even possible to let a visitor select the language, text size and colors used on the site when he or she visits. Along with making sure you have a good modern web design, another important aspect of the modern website is accessibility. The site should include support of text readers for visually impaired and the ability to detect and adjust for the type of device being used to view the site.  Smart phones and the new devices from Apple Inc. are extremely popular. Any successful website will have content that displays the right way on these new handheld devices.

Make sure your site is included in any local business directories
Every metropolitan area has at least one service that lists local businesses in directory form. Many of these are free to businesses at the basic service level with fees increasing depending on the extras a business wants to add. A website link is as important as a phone number and address to the modern consumer. People want to know what to expect before visiting a new restaurant or what the business hours are for a local photography studio. Today’s small businesses are often focused on niche markets and a web site is the ideal way to describe the businesses focus to potential clients.

Use some type of high-tech traffic generating tricks such as SEO.
A potential customer using the web to find a local business will enter search terms that describe his interest. In order for a small business website to be noticed it needs to be positioned on the first page of any search engine results. In national or international searches, web businesses spend jillions to fine tune and optimize their positions in search results. This is called Search Engine Optimisation and it is a huge business for internet-based companies.
For the small, local business the search optimisation is centered on the location and the service or product. Basic SEO techniques can be used to help a small site be found in searches for the local area. Include post codes, County, City, and even neighborhood in any content. Try to get other local businesses to link to the site. Make sure the specifics of the products or services being offered are listed. The more specific the content keywords are the more likely a site will be near the top when a search for specific terms is performed.

These seven suggestions, when used together for full effect, will establish a website as a powerhouse. Very few small businesses are in a position to fully implement this set of actions. Large web-based companies spend millions to implement this same set of actions to get maximum visitors to their sites. Small businesses who simply want to supplement their through-the-door traffic with a website can implement those suggestions that seem most appropriate for their business niche. It may become necessary to make a decision about priorities – spending time on website optimisation or spending time on the core business.

The post Small Business Website Marketing appeared first on Web Design Newcastle, Digital Design Agency Newcastle upon Tyne. NE1 1SG. UK.

Every type of artist begins with the proverbial blank canvas or empty page. In the case of digital artists, they begin with an empty screen. As the designer begins, every aspect of the site can be laid out, setup, themed out, or displayed with an artist’s flair.

Web Design as an Art Form
Art in all of its glory is a process that at the end results in a completed product deliberately produced to appeal to a recipient’s senses or emotions. Art involves creating, expressing, sharing, pleasing, evoking emotions, and sometimes creating controversy.

It takes many forms including music, film, writing, sculpture, paintings, drawing, and acting. Web site design often is an accumulation of many of those art forms. Artful Components of web sites can include:

• The graphic designs for the masthead, sidebars, and other areas
• Color and shading schemes including background, text, boxes, links, and navigational
• Layout of graphics, menus, content, and boxes
• Video clips
• Photographs
• Content writing
• Fonts
• Search engines
• The flow of the web site
• The menu system
• The speed and operation of a web site
• Inclusion of a contact page and how easy it is to find
• Online advertising

All of these elements can provoke a set of emotions. If the menu system is difficult to work around or should be easy items to find are hidden, the feelings that visitors experience may not be the exact emotions a designer may want to evoke.

When the site is easy to look at, navigation is simple, and the content is relevant and helpful, visitors leave with sense of accomplishment and a great appreciation for the site designer.

Web Design Awards
There are several awards devoted to providing designers with real-life examples of the good, the bad, and the downright ugly sites. First, the best of the bad and the ugly awards are given by Web Pages That Suck. Sites receive this award for any number of design blunders including:

• Using different colors for lines of text
• An unimaginable cluttered home page
• Using Flash items on any of the pages
• The content
• Ease of use in finding information

The best of the best can win a Webby Award from The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences which is made up of a 750 members of leading web experts, business people, luminaries, creative celebrities and former Webby Award winners, among others.

Sites receive the award based on a number of criteria such as:

• Pure looks
• Interaction
• Usability
• Functionality

Appreciating Web Design
Most people using the Internet are doing so to accomplish a specific goal. Shopping for books, doing research, communicating with friends, or reading a newspaper are just a few of the activities.

Internet users get caught up in the speed and ease of using web sites and most people only notice the layout and design when it the site is confusing or it takes too much time to find something as simple as the contact information. Taking the time to appreciate the artist’s eye behind the web site design can produce a new level of surfing.

The post Web Design is an Art appeared first on Web Design Newcastle, Digital Design Agency Newcastle upon Tyne. NE1 1SG. UK.