How A Custom Designed Website Can Help Your Business
|
|
Over the years, the internet has grown into a marvelous avenue to promote your business.
In my last article, "Why Your Business Needs to Have an Internet Presence" (http://www.jvmediadesign.com/info37.html), I discussed 5 valid reasons why your business needs a website. In this article, I discuss some things to avoid and how a custom, professional website can help your business succeed.
Professional is the key. Remember, the internet has a global reach. Some of your new potential clientele may be learning of your business for the first time by visiting your website and the old cliché, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression", still rings true.
When a business makes the decision to gain an internet presence, whether they are the largest corporation or the smallest home business, they may be tempted to take what appears to be the "easy way" to get the company website up and running fast. The three major potential pitfalls here are:
1) Some hosting comes with "do it yourself" capabilities and pre-made templates. Although this is a great way to upload photos of your summer vacation for your family and friends to see, this is not a good way to make that great first impression for your business. In short, these "solutions" really do not present a professional image, and often use very minimal templates and overall poor layout and design.
2) Many companies now sell website "templates" for low cost, making it easy for you to get up and running quickly. While this is true (you can get up and running quickly and many of these companies do sell more professional designs), you run the risk of other businesses using that SAME design. And to buy a "unique" copy of the template the cost is often just as, or more expensive, than if you were to hire a professional company to create a custom design for you.
3) Complete websites for $100! This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I have actually seen advertisements for complete websites for very low prices. You must remember that you are investing in your business when you decide to have a custom website developed, and you really do get what you pay for. A professional design firm creates original designs, from scratch, tailor-made for each individual client - and the prices for that work can vary a lot, but do expect to pay a reasonable amount for the services.
These three potential pitfalls aside, the process of getting your business onto the World Wide Web does not have to be a confusing, time-consuming, and costly affair. Below is a succinct outline of the process.
1) First, you need to design on your domain name for your website. Avoid names with "-" in them and very long names. Try to be as succinct as possible. It is easiest for your visitors to remember a URL that is your company name, or at the very least, keywords that describe your company. For instance, if your business is ABC Accounting, you could consider abcaccounting.com or something such as accountingservice.com. You may find that your first (and second!) choice for a domain name may already be taken, so you may have to get creative. Just remember that a domain name that reflects your business is key.
2) Shop around for the right design firm. There is no shortage of companies who can handle the design and development of your website. Do not be afraid to shop around. Prepare a detailed RFP (Request For Proposal) that outlines things such as the goals of your website, your target market, the information you would like to have on your website, and advanced features such as ecommerce. Review the portfolios of companies and send out your RFP to the ones you feel have the skills to do your job. When you've narrowed down the prospects, do not be afraid to ask for personal or telephone interviews. Find out what their design process and work flow is like. Ask for recommendations about what type of web hosting your site will need. Also, make sure to review the design agreement or contract with the company you choose (a professional company will ALWAYS require a contract before work begins).
3) Have a basic idea of what you would like your finished site to look like. It's a good idea to do some "surfing" of the web to see what your competition and similar companies are doing, but look outside your industry as well for designs that catch your eye. This will give your design team a place to start and an idea of the style of design you expect for your own website.
4) Work on your "content". The content of your site includes all the text you wish to display. This is a very important aspect to your site. Although you do not want to overwhelm your visitors with nothing but pages and pages of text, you do want to offer clear, concise, professionally composed and edited information. Proof read, proof read, proof read! If you are in doubt, it is best to consider hiring a professional copy writer. Remember that grammatical errors shout "unprofessional!" to the viewer.
5) Once your site is up and running, don't be afraid to add or edit your content periodically. This keeps your pages "fresh" and shows repeat visitors that your business is active and "takes an interest" in staying up to date.
Sherry Holub received her degree in design from UCLA in 1995. She is now the Lead Designer and Creative Director at Southern California Studio, JV Media Design. http://www.jvmediadesign.com
|
|
|
Created & Maintained by Empower! CMS Web Sites
Host2Sell Web Hosting | Emarketing Workshops | Site SEO Review | FREE NewsletterA Website Checklist
If you've just finished building your new website (or revamping your old one), how can you be sure it's "ready for prime time"? Or maybe your site's been around for awhile and you think it may be due for a makeover. Because Web technologies, techniques and standards change so rapidly, even a website that seems "cutting edge" when it's built can look obsolete a year later. Or maybe you started out with a barebones website and finally have the time and/or money...(related: Web Design)
Its No Good Having A Killer Product If You Dont Have A Killer Website
Read the title of this article over a couple of times in your head so it really starts to sink in.So what does this title really mean. Well, there's no beating around the bush with this one... it means exactly what it says.If your site is NOT an order-pulling, money-sucking mean machine then it's not really worth promoting your product, whether it's a killer product or not.It is vital that your site has a well-written and extremely powerful sales letter that will hook your prospects and reel them in like a fish.Your goal is to walk your prospect through your sales letter straight to your or...(related: Web Design)
Size Does Matter!
In this article we will be looking at why you should keep your web page size small.As any good webmaster knows you should keep the web page size small, but why? It's really simple, both spiders and visitors hate web pages that take forever to load because it's harder to spider the web page or for the visitor they just don't have time to wait for your web page to come up, after all most web sites are not that great, so why wait if your the visitor?You should keep images down in...(related: Web Design)
Why Do Images Disappear From A Webpage?
In learning webpage design, I encountered many problems that took lots of practice to resolve. Although, I was building web pages using Microsoft Frontpage on my home computer, I used to face lots of issues after uploading the webpage to my website.One major problem was the disappearance of an image file from the webpage. When I created the webpage on ...(related: Web Design)
Cheap Website Design In Birmingham
Due to the large number of people offering website design services in Birmingham, there is always a bargain to be found.Web design companies in Birmingham are in a very competitive market and some offer some great deals at various times of the year.People who are just starting out in a career building custom design websites will often offer their services at a very reasonable rate, basically to build up a portfolio. Once they have established themselves they then tend to increase the amount they charge.I have even heard about one person who for a very short period of time was building websites for free! This is an extreme case though.A friend of mine called Dave was looking to have an internet prescence for his small business a number of years ago. He did not have a h...(related: Web Design)
Save Thousands Of Dollars By Creating Your Own Web Site
With the advent of the Internet a whole new vista of business has opened up. Many erstwhile opportunities otherwise not available to us, many markets which were previously inaccessible are accessible to us now. We can transact with anyone anywhere across the world sitting in the comfort of our home.For e.g. a person in New York, USA can send flowers to a person in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India in real time, i.e. almost within 1 hour the delivery of flowers can be arranged. similarly, transactions of mone...(related: Web Design)
Quality Website Design At An Affordable Price
I always have people asking me if I know of anybody who can build them a website which is affordable but also professional looking. They want the website to be search engine friendly, there is no point in having a website if no one can see it, and fully optimised.I am sure there are many people looking for something similar. In my opinion you should not have to spend a lot of money for such a service.With such a lot of people now offering web design and optimisation services in the UK, there are bound to be some good deals to be found. In reality you should be able to have your website built for between £50 and £100.The question is where do you find these great deals?These are the ar...(related: Web Design)
Increase Your Credibility With Web Site Awards
Web Site Awards are given from other sites to reward your site for a specific reason. They will usually give you an award graphic or text link to include on your site if you win. Awards are great to display on your Web site because they will give your business more credibility to your visitor...(related: Web Design)
How Your Business Can Win Online
There are lots of websites out there that do little to encourage their customers to stick around or buy their products from them. In this article i'm going to show you a typical example of where a small company has gone wrong with its website.Company X is a small family run roofing company. They repair, install and insulate roofs. They spend a lot of time and money advertising in the press and ex...(related: Web Design)
14 Ways To Add Content To Your Web Site - Part 2
7. Create high quality content - make clear points with each paragraph you write. Each paragraph should build on the previous one, so that you are pulling your visitor through your page naturally. You are trying to pre sell the product or service to your visitor. This puts them in a natural frame of mind to buy (unlike many sites which may just have pictures of the products and a shopping cart).8. Web page background - a colorful or busy background can make yo...(related: Web Design)
Website Design: Secrets Of Professional Website Designers Revealed
What colors do you have at your website?Can they make a difference in the number of sales that yougenerate?Can the use of the right colors in your website design actually increase your sales?The answer is yes!So pay attention to thesee website design secrets.When people see certain colors they can change their emotions or they can symbolize things related to the colors.Here are a list of colors with some emotions and symbolizations they can cause:Red - love, excitement, warmthPink - romantic, affection, sensualityWhite - purity, peace, perfectionBlue - sky, water, travel, freedom, truth...(related: Web Design)
No Matr How Goud The Infomation...
Typos, misspellings, hideous grammar, exclamation overkill and run-on sentences all undermine a Web site's message. Your reader will have to work too hard, and you won't have that reader long.Grabbing a reader's attention is a key point in getting your message out, but there is such a thing as too much grabbing--and the wrong kind of attention. Negative attention can lose a great many visitors and potential clients.Clean content and neat appearance are not merely a matter of aesthetics. It goes to the core of establishing trust and reliability between a Web site and visitor. Relate it...(related: Web Design)
Why Long Web Pages Are Better Than Short Ones
Many Internet sites that try to sell you something have very long pages. Why is that do you think? Well, it appears that long, scrolling, web pages lead to more sales than short pages. This article explains why you need long web pages.If you have surfed the web for things to buy you can hardly have missed some of the seemingly endless, long, scrolling web pages that only tell you the price somewhere near the bottom of the page. Some of these web pages have around 5,000 words on them - a good chapter o...(related: Web Design)
site-map - Copyright © 2006 Empower! Web Design | All Rights Reserved. | Web Design