Is your website pretty or ugly? Is it cutting edge or old school? Do you have a custom design or is it based on a template? The hard truth is that none of the above matter. The only question that really matters when it comes to business websites is “Does it sell? Does it generate leads and clients? Does it make me money?”

Certainly, some business websites need a certain aesthetic due to the nature of their business. An artist’s site better look good! And, if you are marketing innovation in some field, then a little innovation on your site might support the sales process. But ultimately, these issues are secondary to the sales generated or supported by your website. Regardless of the nature of your business, there are a few web design principles that ought to show up on your site. In most cases, these principles can be incorporated into any web design.

1. Clarity. Is the message of your site, each page of your site, crystal clear? If someone wants to contact you, is it easy to find your contact info? If you’re selling online, does the design make it very easy for visitors to go through the purchase process? And, is it very obvious how to navigate through the site?

2. Contact Capture. Does your website prioritize capture of the visitor contact info, at least first name and email, so that you can follow up with them (and sell to them!) in the future? This is a common shortcoming of business websites.

The reason this is so important is because a very low percentage of first time web visitors buy anything. And if they don’t buy they often don’t come back. But if you can entice them to offer their contact info in exchange for something of value- a discount coupon or some relevant information- then you can build a relationship with them and market to them over and over again.

The average website converts at 2-3%. That is, two to three percent of the visitors take action in some way. But the top ten converting high-traffic websites convert at an average of 23%! And this is because they work hard to get contact info and draw the customers back to their websites with compelling offers.

3. Traffic Analytics. With Google Analytics being offered as a free service, no one has any excuse for not having analytics installed on their website. And benefits of analytics are massive.

For starters you can see where your site visitors are coming from and how they are getting to your site. This will give you ideas for tweaking your site. You will also see how long people stay on your site and how many pages they visit. If they leave too soon or only visit one page, that’s a more than a hint that your content is weak and not compelling enough to get them to stick around. And, If you use PPC (pay per click) marketing to get people to your site, you can add the conversion tracking component to see which keywords are actually bringing you the people who buy or give up their contact information. This allows you to focus in on the keywords, both with PPC and SEO (search engine optimization) that brings you the best return.

4. Customer Fixation. Too many business websites are about the business itself; a selling website is about the client and what you can do for them. Too many business websites get overly zealous about describing the details of their product features, when all the client really want to know is “Will this make me look cool?” or “Will this make me feel happier?” or “Will this result in more money in my pocket?”

A true customer fixation means that you constantly gather data, perhaps even through surveys, to discover what your customers really want. Then you explain how your product or service gives it to them. Maybe you even develop new products or services that meet their cravings even better.

Conclusion: It should be readily apparent to you that these principles are somewhat distinct from web design. Apart from clarity- which can be a greatly helped or hindered by design- these factors lean more toward the content side of the site. But, the web design must support these principles, and in fact be subservient to them. Web design needs to support web marketing. That is its primary purpose on a business website.

Daren Wride
Kelowna Web Design
Internet Marketing for Small Businesses

Website requirements for small businesses

Having a website is now commonplace for a small business. Many people now have a friend or friend of a friend that can whip them up a cheap website. Some people even choose to give it a go themselves with an online website programme like wix.com for example.

Although I am a great believer in people trying everything once I wouldn’t say this about a website. Web designers are not just technically trained to use software development programmes. They are also trained to design eye catching websites that are relevant to your business and can appeal to your customers.

As a company director no one should know their customers better than you, but does this make you the perfect person to design a website for your company? There are many websites online which don’t look too shocking on the surface, but I’m sure aren’t doing half as well as they can!

These are the most common problems that I have found when looking at small business websites.

Mistake number 1 – Using free website programmes to design websites…and getting carried away.
Some website building programmes are really easy to use. They can create an all singing all dancing site which is highly interactive. In fact, the longer you play around with wix.com the more singing and dancing your site might end up.

The advice here is, do not get carried away and over design the site. Ok, the dancing bears look cool and the flashing logo is hard to miss, but are your customers looking for this on your site? Sometimes simple design works. In most books for web designers they will beg you not to have things moving and flashing on the page unless it is necessary. Have you ever left a web page because you find it irritating?

Mistake number 2 – I understand my website so my customers will…eventually.

Have you made a website you like or your potential customers may like? If you know your business well you may assume your potential customers know you well too. Keep your content clear and precise. Tell your customer why they are on your website and help them decide where they are going. Recently I have got to the third paragraph on a website before understanding the nature of the business. In the words of the infamous – in the web world – Steve Krug “don’t make me think”.

Web designers go to considerable effort to guide your visitors easily through websites. This comes from simple navigation and also from calls to action and clear directions. If you plan on designing the website yourself, remember to keep the navigation bar in the same place on every page. And don’t forget to keep the calls to action clear.

Mistake number 3 – It looks OK and works but the code is… out of control?

You have managed to get your head around Dreamweaver and made yourself a bespoke site. Ok, the site looks ok but do you understand coding? Even though your visitors won’t be seeing the coding that makes your site work, Google will. Bad coding often leads to pages taking ages to load – this looses you business. Bad coding also confuses Google. Clear coding means better search rankings, one free thing a small business does not want to forfeit. Websites are now commonly made using CSS and XHTML, in a nutshell, this keeps code short and concise which means faster a website and the opportunity for your customers to find your website.

Most web designers are making websites in CSS rather than HTML tables – double check this with your web designer.

Keri Newman is a web design and marketing consultant – http://www.kerinewman.com.

80-90% of website owners spend almost all of their time trying to get traffic. You’d be surprised to see how much of this traffic actually sticks. After doing lots of research (my own websites and others), I saw, at least a 70-80% bounce rate of the traffic that comes to your website.

The bounce rate gives you an idea how much time they spend on the webpage and how deep they checked your website. The bounce rate here is way too high and they never clicked away the moment they landed on the websites. Bad thoughts that.

What makes people stick to your website?

Before I answer this, let me ask you a question. What is more important – A unique visitor or Repeat visitor.

In normal set of conditions, website owners would like nothing more than unique set of visitors.

But in this scenario, I’d prefer ‘repeat visitors’.

Why Repeat visitors make you go ga-ga?

Repeat visitors means, they have already been on your site. Now, they came back for more. The more communication channels you create between you and your reader, the better your chances to sell them. The best thing about them is that you don’t have to spend any money/time as much for any unique visitors.

They liked your website, or your message or your content or god knows what, but they liked it. They are back for more. Wouldn’t you like to take this chance to cement a long term relationship with them?

In this long term relationship you’ll be able to sell them more and more. Can you think of elements that can help you create this long term relationships?

How these elements can get you repeat visitors?

Everything comes back to your content and how you present them. Your content will take shape in many forms from just text to Audio/video or email content. You have to build your content in a way which brings back your readers many many times.

To do this, you have to focus on “most wanted response”.

The term most wanted response was coined by Ken Evoy, a marketing genius in his own right. Every page in your website should have “Most Wanter Response (MWR)”.

In MWR, all you have to focus on “What your reader should do when he comes to your webpage”. Notice I said, webpage, not website. Why? Because they can only surf website page by page.

At every page you have to decide what response you want them to make?

Do you want them to subscribe to your list?

Do you want them to follow a certain link?

Do you want them to buy something?

Or Do you want them to take another action?

So exactly what this will do?

First thing it focuses their attention to something you want them to do (or going to do anyway).

Second thing it kicks off any goofs, who are there just for a joy ride.

Third thing, it starts to filter different type of visitors.

Do you think all of this work will be pain in the neck? Of course it’ll. It’s your business, if you don’t do it, then who will?

Remember when readers are there, get them to act.

If you need any marketing help/advice, then click here -> http://www.varunpratap.com/consulting-services/.

To build a banner for a website, the first step is familiarization on what the website is all about. It has to be something that grabs attention and at the same time, it has to be something relevant to the content the website has to offer. There are informational websites, business websites and even personal websites. Each of the many kinds would understandably have a different approach in relating to their audience. The “voice” of the content should be something that is appealing to the target market. If it is a website that deals with legal matters, then everything should have a certain air of formality. Just the same, if it is aimed to sell products to teenagers, then the content of the web pages should be something attractive to that age group. Contrary to what others may believe, it is not only the text content that matters. Graphics also largely contribute to stimulating the audience. Aside from text and visuals, audio may also have an impact. Going back to the design of the banner, it has to be concise and something that relays a message.

As simple as it may seem, a banner still has a lot of elements. Some web designers incorporate the title of the website when they build a banner. Other times, they also use a logo along with the title. This can also be used especially that visuals are known to stick longer than letters. There are also web designers who combine the logo, the title as well as a tagline within the banner. The reason as to why people go out of their way to build a banner for a website is because it is what web guests would see while they are browsing through the web pages of that website. Having an appropriate design for banners is synonymous to having an effective stimulus for the audience. In the case of the television, people restlessly surf channels until they see something that interests them. The scenario is almost the same for the World Wide Web. A lot of people surf randomly and quickly shift to another page if they cannot find anything they fancy. If a person only spends a few seconds to a few minutes in each of the web pages they visit, then the concept of an effective banner becomes clear. Once it grabs the attention of the visitor, it would be left to what the content has to offer.

Designers use software such as Photoshop when they build a banner for a website. Some people would opt to simply crop an image to fit the requirements of the website but it would not be as effective as one would hope. If a person has an eye for photography and design then it may be enough to come up with one but if they are not so confident with their skills, it would be best to pay for someone to do it. If the preferred web hosting service supports it, people can also have animation in their banners. However, they should keep it simple to guarantee that there will be no problems concerning how fast the page uploads.

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So you want to learn how to build a website from Scratch. The purpose of this article is to summarise the process of building a static website using standard technologies such as Photoshop, XHTML, CSS etc.

When building websites for my clients I regularly use a content management system such as Joomla. I will talk about content management systems later in this article.

I generally think about the web design process as split into the following stages…

• Design and preparation
• Programming
• Content Management System (CMS) integration
• Adding content, plugins and developing the site functionality

Design and Preparation

To help you get started with the design you might find it useful to download the 960 Grid template from the following address. 960.gs. Inside the package they have templates files for Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, InDesign etc.

Most designers use Photoshop and/or Illustrator for the design. They are both similar in functionality. Photoshop as the name suggests is generally better for processing photographs and Illustrator is generally better for illustrations such as logos, icons etc.

I prefer to use photoshop but that’s only because I am more comfortable using photoshop.

There are essentially two editing methods which are used when creating a design. One method is pixel based and the other method is vector based. An example of pixel based editing is processing a photograph in some way and an example of vector based editing may include the illustration of cartoon character etc. You can shape and manipulate vector images as many times as want giving you much more control over the design. Vector based editing is a skill that requires time and patience to learn but I would recommend focusing your efforts on developing this skill.

The preparation part of this stage referrers to slicing up the design into logical sections. These sections will then be pieced back together in the programing stage. When creating a design it is important to label all of the different layers and group all related layers into groups or “layer sets”. This will make life easier when cropping the different parts of the design. The process of cropping or slicing a design can require a lot of consideration depending on the complexity of the design.

What format should I save the cropped files?

There are many different image formats. However, I am only going to mention the three most common formats used in web design and these are PNG, JPEG and GIF.

In general PNGs are useful for images, which require a transparent background. However, transparent PNG’s are larger in size in comparison to JPEG or GIF.

The JPEG format is useful if you do not require transparent background images but still require smooth variations of tone and colour. JPEG is commonly used for photographic images, paintings etc.

The GIF format is useful for simple images with solid areas of colour. Due to the colour limitations, the GIF format it is not appropriate for photographs etc. Of course the advantage of using the GIF format is the comparatively small files size.

Programming

Now that you have the individual sections/images of the design cropped and ready it is time to start re-constructing the design using two formatting languages which work together called XHTML and CSS. I will not go into much detail about these languages but in a nutshell CSS is a list of rules, which determine the look and feel of the site as well as specifying the layout of the site. XHTML is used to output these rules to the browser.

NOTE: When building a website using XHTML/CSS it is important to use the validation tool validator.w3.org at regular intervals. This will make it easier to debug your code should you encounter any browser discrepancies.

OK. to summarise…

You have designed the website using Photoshop or Illustrator, cropped the design into logical slices, re-constructed the design using XHTML and CSS and tested the resulting web page on a variety of browsers. As mentioned previously in the article, I do not want to go into too much technical detail as the purpose of this article is outline the various stages for those who are new to web design.

Anyway, now it is time integrate the Content Management System (CMS).

Content Management System Integration

What is a Content Management System?

Think about MySpace, Facebook etc. You can login and edit pictures, text etc. The changes then appear when you view your profile.

Facebook and MySpace both have a system in which you can manage the content yourself.

In our scenario we want to add the same functionality to the web page the we have built. For the purpose of this example we will assume that we are using the Joomla CMS. Joomla is an open source CMS meaning that it is free to use.

Integrating the CMS can be done in various ways but I generally take the following steps:

• Convert XHTML/CSS web page into a Joomla template.
• Upload and install the Joomla CMS onto my web-server
• Upload the converted template to the templates folder.
• Login to the administration section of the website (CMS) and start adding content, plugins etc.

Convert XHTML/CSS web page into a Joomla template

This can seem complex at first but it can be achieved by simply copying and pasting sections of code from an existing template into your index.html file. You just need to learn which parts of the code to copy and paste. You will also need to save the index.html file as index.php.

I will publish a tutorial about Joomla template conversion at some point in the near future.

Upload and install the Joomla CMS onto your web-server

You could install Joomla locally but for the sake of simplicity I will only make reference to the installation of Joomla on a live web server. The simplest most easy way of doing this would be to use Fantastico. To use this application, simply log-in to your hosting control panel (cpanel), click on the Fantastico icon, select Joomla from the list and follow the simple installation instructions.

Upload the converted template to the templates folder

Ok. So you have converted the template and saved it as index.php. You will however, also need to create a file called templateDetails.xml. This file will give Joomla information about the template and allow you to select it as default in the administration section. Again, I will not go into this now.

Inside the folder where all of your files are you should have something like index.php, index.html, stylesheet.css and templateDetails.xml. You should also have an “images” folder for your images. Much of the way you structure your folders is up to you. Now go to the templates folder on your web-server. You can access the files on your web-server using either your hosting control panel of via FTP (file transfer protocol). Upload your folder to the /templates/ directory. Next, login to the Joomla admin and in the template manager section and select your template as default.

Login to the administration section of your website (CMS) and start adding content, plugins etc

This is fairly self-explanatory. You can read tutorials about how to edit and update the content but I feel its better to have a play around and if you come across a problem, use Google to find an answer. It normally works for me.:-)

Web Page Templates for Web Designers.
Devon Website Design.