Several statistics indicate that website design consumers typically hire locally-based web designers more than those located distant places. This bent is largely due to consumer confidence and trust in those closer to them. When looking for a web design company, it’s important to hire someone who has his/her contact details like physical contact address, email address and telephone number readily available on the website. The information will be useful for you when your web design project is underway, so that you can easily contact the person you hired. It is also vital that you only hire someone whom you can contact at anytime. A website designer who strictly adheres to the best practices of search engine-optimized design will definitely be the best choice. A person who doesn’t have a good communication skill doesn’t qualify as a good choice.

Web Design Tips For Consumers

Tips for getting an affordable website design:
Getting a new site designed for you can be quite either cheap or expensive, depending on some factors. Here are the tips you have to bear in mind. As a budget-minded consumer, there are some necessary steps you should take, so as to get your project affordable. The secret to affordability is to keep your project as simple as possible.

• Try to minimize the number of web pages and avoid asking the web designer to create pages that would not add value to your website. Due to the fact that lots of web designers work on hourly basis, cost increases as number of pages increases.
• Unless necessary, you may want to avoid content management systems (CMS), since they take a prolonged time to develop, and time is money.
• Create a list of few reputable web designers in your area, call each one of them and select the one that offers the best value for the money.

Factors that contribute to an appealing website design:
All websites are not designed equally! There are certain elements that help a website design to stand out in the crowd. The principal factors that lend weight to a beautiful website design are as follows:

• An appealing website design utilizes well-structured CSS elements to position each object of web pages.
• You’ll agree with me that it’s very appealing for a website to use drop shadows to create visual impressions that raise some objects above others. A website that makes use of reflections to imitate reflective objects, such as mirrors and shiny surfaces, is usually great-looking.
• Creatively-designed icons, when used together with textual content to effortlessly convey messages, also help in beautification.
• Since social media is an Internet norm these days, social media and viral tools for networking with potential customers are an essential part of a beautiful design.

Planning and designing your first website:
As a consumer, you’re the person who has to decide how you want your new website to look. If you’re not well-prepared, that can be quite challenging. First of all, make a good research of websites in your niche you’d like to take some features from. Note down the features you’d like to integrate into your website. Ensure that those features will definitely serve your needs. Since you know your business better than anybody else, you’re the one who will provide images like product photos and product descriptions. Prepare those items before choosing a web designer, because any delay to quickly provide them will surely slow down the web design process. To avoid overpaying, we suggest that you simply start with a five-paged website. In future, as your business progresses, you can then ask the web designer to add more pages. As your site’s operations become larger, you can consider turning it into a content management to make it more interactive, and allow you to add more web pages on the front-end.

The perfect time to get your website redesigned:
If your website was designed several years ago by an amateur web designer who didn’t know how to optimize web pages for search engines, you might consider giving it a fresh new look using CSS. The Internet has evolved at a lightning speed since the days of table-based websites. Redesigning your website will reflect your progress in business. Reusing the textual content of your old design will help to cut down your expenses. You may want to optimize the content by prioritizing targeted keywords, proper use of title and Heading tags. Get the product photos and textual content like product descriptions ready, so the website redesign process would not be delayed.

What makes a quality website design:
Each great artistic design has the building blocks that make it to illuminate. Professionally-looking websites win customers for their owners. There are some things that lend weight to a quality website design. A clean website design looks attractive to visitors and is very soothing to the soul. A quality site design must have a logical architecture of content, to make it easy to navigate across the. Researches prove that Internet users have short attention spans and therefore don’t waste time on websites that include unnecessary information. With that in mind, websites that convey straight-forward messages to their visitors without adding irrelevant details make a great difference in helping to boost their earnings.

How to get a functional website design:
When planning to get your website designed, it’s vital to understand the behavior and needs of web users. Creating a good navigation will help site visitors to effortlessly access the information that matter to them. The common pitfall of a never-ending design project is usually the fault of both the web designer and the client. Planning and research are essential, if you actually want to get a functional website. It’s vital that you have at least a basic vision of a desired design, which you need to communicate to the designer. Prepare all the necessary texts and images (photos), and send them to the web designer. Your project will not move forward, if you get stuck on details. So, to make sure your website design is functional, it’s vital for you to see the big picture at the beginning and commit to a completed result, instead of wasting time on intangible things.

What you need to know concerning a business website design:
A business website design should include all the necessary elements that help the company to convey the right messages to its target audience. Sending the right messages across enables a brand to exude professionalism and win over prospective customers. The design should include a contact phone number, so customers and prospective ones can call when in need. Contact address, sales and support email addresses must be readily available on the website. It’s also essential to let site visitors know your office hours, to they’d avoid trying to reach you during non-office hours. Since the site’s users will include their personal information when they contact you, it’s important that you have a privacy policy page that explicitly states what you use those details for and your efforts to protect them. Having a live chat tool on a business website design is one of the best ways to show you’re capable of taking care of urgent customer issues.

Why a custom website design is better that purchasing a template:
Originality conveys a far better message to people than duplication of the same stuff. A brand must be unique for people to respect it and want to buy from it. Custom web design is a great way to show uniqueness and build an enduring, strong brand on the Internet. This helps to get people to easily recognize one’s identity on the web. When you use a template that can be found on several websites, you can’t expect such result. While a custom website design boosts corporate identity, a template diminishes it. A custom brand makes sure that every web elements is properly represented and specifically tailored to suit its target audience. Another thing is that most templates are notorious for not being well-optimized for proper search engine crawling and indexing. On the contrary, a custom design by a seasoned professional is generally designed in accordance with search engine guidelines.

There are simple tips and tricks that you need to keep in mind once you have decided to make your own web design. If you will keep these tips and tricks in mind then you will never go wrong with your web designing. For instance, using a professional digital agency like Northern Beaches Website Design can provide you with a website that can attract lots of clients and customers to your business. This is the easiest way to get effective web design without the need to spend a lot of time perfecting your design skills in applications such as Photoshop. However, if wish to try your luck in designing you own site, then you can use these tips and tricks.

Keep it clutter free – maybe you are aware about different effects that you can do with your site through Fireworks and Photoshop, but you need to realise that just because you can use these effects, doesn’t mean you should over indulge and use them too much. Some website owners who choose to create their own web design use too many design elements, making their website very cluttered. A simple design that matches your business is appealing and interesting to viewers. Digital agencies like Bezz offer a wide range of services that can increase traffic on your site. If you decided to use a Website Design Northern Beaches company like Bezz, you can be rest assured that your site is created according to what your target market needs.

It is also important to use visuals to communicate with your target market. You need to use them as a way of conveying direct messages to your customers. For instance, if you are selling eco-friendly products, then you may opt to use colours green, brown and other earth colours. If you are selling products such as toys aimed at young girls, then pink is an attractive colour to use.

To wrap it up, as the old adage goes, content is king. Interesting content will keep users coming back to your website. You need to remember that visuals will only wow your visitors for the first time, but they are not enough to keep them coming back.

Almost every website undergoes some form of facelift at some point in their lifetime. So, if you own a website, whether it’s a personal or business website, it will need to be redesigned at some point in its life-cycle. Maybe, you’ve moved from one niche to another, or you may simply want to redesign your website for aesthetic reasons. Whatever, redesigning a website can a major undertaking, if you take your online presence seriously. So, we have compiled some tips on the factors you have to bear in mind, when trying to redesign your website.

What are the reasons for redesigning your website?
Perhaps, this is the most deceptively-complex question to ask, when trying to redesign a website. Yet, everyone agrees that it’s an obvious question, right? Before you begin the facelift, it’s essential to have a very clear vision of what you want to accomplish. Are you unhappy with the functionality of your current design? Do you simply want a more attractive website? Has your business grown so much and you want your site to reflect where you are today? Has your business focus shifted and it’s high time your website reflected your current business? Do you want to make your site more interactive? Or maybe you simply want a new website with better
search engine-optimized web pages.

All the above-mentioned factors are worth your consideration. So, before you dive into website redesigning, make a comprehensive list of what you want to achieve. Doing this would help you to remain focused on the end goal throughout the website redesign process.

What form of redesign work is best for your needs?
By now I assume you have some clear reasons why you want to give your site a facelift. So, it’s time to decide the extent of the makeover. Maybe, only some minor content and visual modifications are actually needed. Or do you need to add some new features and even better optimize the underlying code-base? The factors that would help you to decide how far down the rabbit hole you’re willing to go are your design needs and budget. In some cases, a total overhaul may not be necessary, though it might as well be the most cost-effective long-term solution. So, we recommend that you take some moments to go through your needs and communicate them in clear details to your website designer. Hopefully, both of you would most likely strike a balance that best meets those needs without suffocating your wallet.

What currently works and what doesn’t?
Regardless of how small or large the redesign would be, there are chances some features of your existing design perform optimally, while some don’t deliver good results. Now go through your website, page-by-page, and identify what you want to keep and the ones that would be done away with. Check to see if your web pages aren’t user-friendly, or if the content is too verbose. On the other hand, your blog and image gallery may be driving enormous, targeted traffic to your site. So, you may want to keep them and every other thing that helps to increase your ROI (return on investment). While some elements of your existing website design would be done away with, some would need to be fine-tuned to be in line with modern trends. So, some design elements would remain; though would use a minor makeover to be in line with the entire new design. The best way to approach this stage is to break the entire website down into its major components, and then compare them with the goals you decided on in step #1 and the over-all vision you have for the website. If any element doesn’t align well, just dump it!

How do visitors use your website?
Make it a point of duty to ascertain how your target audiences are interacting with your website. What are their entry points? Which web pages are mostly viewed? What information interests them most? Check to see the keywords that drive high volumes of traffic to the site. What are the sales conversion rates of those keywords? What is the bounce rate of each web page? You can use web analytics like Google Analytics or software like Market Samurai to find out those statistics. Using analytics tools will help you to better understand your visitors, their data needs, as well as to identify the elements of your current design that works well and also the problem areas. Moreover, have a closer look at your visitors’ browsers and screen resolutions. Provide your web designer all your findings. Maybe, your site’s technical specifications can use some fine-tuning, to meet the needs of your target audience. You might even need a mobile version of the site. That’s assuming a high percentage of your visitors arrive via mobile devices.

Has your corporate image or brand changed?
If your corporate image and/or brand have changed in any way, then, those changes need to be reflected on your website, regardless of how minor they might be. If your philosophy or company image has shifted, consider an overhaul of your site’s color scheme and make sure you update your logo. In the age of the Internet, your website is most likely the first impression people get of your business. Thus, its growth and maturity should be in line with the rest of your brand identity.

What’s the right timing and how to roll out your redesigned website?
The timing and how your redesigned website is launched can have the capability of creating a big impact that would subsequently generate a substantial buzz about the website and your products/services. You can either choose to quietly roll out the enhancements, stage-by-stage, or you can announce a big launch to your target audience via press releases, social media, etc. Even though inconspicuous launching of a redesigned website won’t generate a lot of buzz about your offerings, but at least it would still accomplish your goal of enhancing the site’s performance and user experience. On the other hand, creating a buzz about your site’s new features can help to drive enormous traffic and generate more exposure for your products and/or services.

Why you should make a smoother transition.
Notable researches show that majority of repeat visitors are generally intimidated by design modifications. If your website attracts lots of repeat visitors, be aware that a sudden, drastic change in shape and functionality can make some of them uncomfortable. Moreover, you should never allow a redesign to destroy your search engine rankings, as well as the backlinks you’ve painstakingly acquired over the years.

The key to achieving a smoother transition is to make the vital elements of the new design, such as the header and the main navigation, similar to the old design. A seasoned web designer will always strive to make a redesigned website to be an evolution of the old one, and not a drastic replacement. If you opt for a drastic change, then, it’s best to publish a press release (PR) or blog post to discuss the modifications with your site’s users.

To make transition effortless for web crawlers, we recommend you redirect moved content with 301 redirects. A 301 redirect is used to notify user agents (clients) that the requested web content has been permanently moved from one location to another. It’s also important to customize your error 404 “Page Not Found” page in a way to contain helpful information to your human visitors. Such helpful information should be relevant to the content the visitor requested.

Draw In Visitors To Your Offerings:
We all know that captivating slideshow presentations help business websites to attract the attention of visitors to their offerings. Once attention has been drawn, the visitor will most likely look around the website to check out its products and/or services that might be of interest to him/her. So, one of the main purposes of slideshows is to grab the attention of those who have interest in the type of things you offer before they move away from your website. This attraction allows visitors to focus on your products, as well as eliminate the circumstances that might cause wavering of concentration.

Communicate Visually:
Slideshows enable site owners to communicate their messages to visitors more effectively than static images and texts. It has been proven by many renowned experts that visual communication facilitates better understanding of products and services. So, why not use it to enhance visitors’ understanding of your products and/or services?

Proven Studies:
Several authoritative studies have proven that slideshows communicate messages about three times faster than regular, static images and texts. As an average Internet user has a short attention span and spends just a few seconds on a new website, having a slideshow in place is one the best ways to quickly get your messages across and prevent the visitor from leaving.

Enhance Understanding:
An old axiom says that a single picture has the capability to communicate a thousand words! This is especially true with slideshows, as long as they’re relevant to visitors’ needs, professionally-designed and creatively-presented on web pages. It’s recommended for business websites to use slideshows to quickly get messages across to their target audiences.

Which slideshow designer to hire?
Well, the Internet is filled with many highly-talented web designers who fully understand how the human mind communicates with images and texts.  My advice is to go for one that put your ideas dynamically into images and texts, to enhance communication. As a rule, make sure all the key information of your product(s) and/or service(s) is represented in your slideshow.

Generally, both HTML and CMS are good web technologies – each has its advantages and disadvantages, but at the end, it boils down to what you want to use the website for. What tasks do you want your website to perform? What do you want the users to be able to do? What do you want to achieve with the functionality? Knowing these will help you to choose either CMS or HTML-based site. Whatever, the type you should be able to serve all your needs. Now, let’s look at the two:

A CMS, an abbreviation of content management system, is an engine used for powering dynamic websites. These dynamic websites are programmed with server-side scripting languages, such as PHP, ASP, Python, ColdFusion, JSP, etc. They also allow users to interact with websites in numerous ways: your visitors can quickly send messages to you directly from your website; they allow site owners to automate processing of business transactions, including payment, without any human interference. Moreover, with CMS, your website will typically behave more properly in response to user behavior.

The advantages of CMS over static HTML web pages:

•   It is easier to maintain by someone who doesn’t have HTML skills.
• CMS is more interactive than pure HTML-based website.
• It engages your users and generally includes more capabilities to turn potential consumers into buying customers.
• You can include contact forms to allow the site’s users to contact you directly from your website. This circumvents the rigmarole of having to achieve that only through logging in to their email accounts.
• You can add email subscription forms on web pages to enable your visitors to opt in to receiving updates about your site’s content that interests them. Through this means alone, you can build a large mailing list!

The disadvantages of content management system:

• A CMS is generally more resource-intensive than a HTML-based website of the same size and content. We pages load on the browser by making script calls to the hosting server, and these can turn your website into a resource hog, if it’s badly coded.
•  Computer hackers tend to target content management systems. If any security hole exists, hackers will exploit the vulnerability and attack your website. So, if you choose CMS over HTML, make sure it is well-coded by a security-minded web developer.
• Dynamically-generated URLs pose issues for web crawlers when they try to crawl and index them. So, you have to put in extra effort to rewrite the URLs. Gladly, Apache Web Server has a function called Mod_Rewrite that enables web developers to achieve an illusion of static URL.

On the other hand, HTML is an acronym for HyperText Markup Language. It’s a client-side scripting language used for designing static web pages. This means processing of content requests is done by the visitor’s web browser, and this eases the load of web servers. On a pure HTML website, visitors can only view the content and read it, but cannot interact with the site, as opposed to what they’ll do with a content management system.

The advantages of HTML-based websites:

• Unlike content management systems, HTML-based websites don’t consume a lot of server bandwidth. We generally recommend this option, if your web hosting budget is low and you expect to be getting large number of visitors everyday. This will help your hosting account not to get banned, when the site starts getting to too many visitors.
• HTML-based websites have static URLs, which are search engine-friendly. So, you don’t need to rewrite any URL – static URL is a given!
• You don’t have to worry about any security hole in your code.

The disadvantages of HTML-based websites:

• HTML lacks the engaging capability of CMS.
• It is not interactive.

The bottom-line is to choose the technology that best serves your needs today and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.