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Things to look out for when Contacting a Web Design Agency

A website design can be a truly make-or-break asset for businesses in the current hyper connected world. As the internet has developed, businesses have only seen their customers move more and more online, requiring them to have a presence there to take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities available there. There are various ways to do this, but, undoubtedly, building your own website is sure to play an important role. However, a website design is by no means a simple matter, and your choice on this matter will determine your ability to find potential customers, convert them into sales, and service your business in an efficient manner. Therefore, finding a web design agency that can take a holistic approach to this subject is essential, and here are some steps that you can take to vet them effectively.

Thankfully, one of the most valuable sources of vetting that you have at hand is free and easily available, which is their presence in search results. If a website design agency is unable to achieve a relatively decent position on search results for what you would assume is an important area for them, then you would only doubt their capabilities. As achieving good results in a search engine such as google is important to any online business, if they can’t do this for themselves, what faith can you have that they will achieve it for you?

It is also important that the design agency that you choose is able to meet your needs. It might be the case that the best option available to you is to use a service whereby a web design is the only thing you get, but for most businesses, you may be significantly advantaged by having a management system put in place with your website as well. These can help to manage stock and sales, in addition to content management that will enable you to make periodic changes to your website that will otherwise be expensive.

The next best option, and the one likely to be the most informative, outside of sitting down for a meeting with the web design agency, is to look over testimonials. Often times, the techniques for designing and programming a website will undergo subtle shifts depending on the market of the website in question, so finding testimonials that are relevant to your business is particularly important. In general, a testimonial will tell you a lot about the quality and scope of an agency’s work. Another thing to bear in mind is that testimonials on their own website, while potentially important, shouldn’t be the only step in the process. You should also look at independent sources, and also check whether or not the businesses included in the testimonial have maintained a working relationship with the agency.

So long as you’ve carefully reviewed your options through the previous methods, you should be ready to contact a web design agency and see if they are able to meet your needs. At this point, you should make sure that you have chosen an agency that can meet your timetable, and that can produce a website design of a high quality.

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Is your website attracting your target clients?

Target clients are a group of people who you consider to be specifically interested in your products and services and as such are the people who you want to find your website amongst the vast array of websites available online. How do you ensure that your website is attracting these clients and that they are clicking on the appropriate links to find the information they require?

A meeting with a recommended web designer to discuss your options is an excellent place to start as they will be able to advise you on the best way forward. Your marketing budget can be discussed, and most web designers will be able to provide an effective website to fit your budget within reason.

Make clear at this meeting who your target client group are and discuss your ideas for how to direct your clients to the relevant pages of your site. If your website has broken links or too much irrelevant information potential clients will become frustrated and look elsewhere so it is important that the site is well managed and kept up to date. This can be done in house which can work out cheaper or can be undertaken by a web management company.

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Be sure not to forget your mobile visitors

If you have a company website then it is worth spending some time analysing the stats. Some companies use their own analytics package that is attached to their hosting or you may wish to use Google analytics which offers a user friendly comprehensive analytics program that is free to use.
When looking through your stats you may be surprised as to how many visitors view your website on a mobile or tablet device. More and more people own smart devices such as phones and tablets and are using them to browse the web and make purchases online. This information can be vital as you can then check to see what it is they are viewing and if it is showing all the information you want it to.
Checking your site regularly on these devices will allow you to quickly notice any issues where content is not displayed correctly or missing entirely. If you do have this issue you may notice that the bounce rate is higher or returning customers levels are lower on the mobile devices.
Be sure to correct any issues that you have and when new content is added or structural changes are made to the site, that these are replicated on the mobile version.

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Pay Per Click – getting the most out of your campaigns

PPC is also known as Pay per Click is a way of advertising your business using paid for ads online. Many companies often reply on this method of marketing to drive a lot of traffic to their site, and if set up correctly and with the right budget, it can be very successful.
It can be a little expensive, so Pay per Click may be something you only want to use occasionally alongside Search Engine Optimisation for your website to boost your organic listings.
If you have a PPC campaign set up or are looking to create one then I would strongly advise speaking to a professional. It is relatively easy to create a basic campaign yourself, but without having the correct settings and keywords you may find that you waste a large percentage of your budget on unqualified visitors.
Within most PPC campaigns, such as Google Adwords for example you can select targeted locations, times to show your ad and create keywords that trigger your ads. You can also add in negative keywords that you do not want your ads to show for thus cutting down on wasted clicks.
If you are not confident in doing your own Pay Per Click campaigns then you may want to use a specialist marketing company to set up and possibly run the campaigns for you. This can often get you a better return on your investment.

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How to build a website navigation

There are so many different ways in which you can lay out a website that often the navigation is in a different place from one site to the next. Historically navigations used to always be at the top of the site spanning the whole page but with sites getting larger and larger it is not always possible to fit all of your main pages on to a top navigation. Also with the use of smart devices such as phones and tablets, it is important that your navigation is easy to use across multiple device and displays in the correct way.

You will need to decide if you are going to have drop downs from your main navigation and how this will work. Will the drop downs expand when you hover over them or only on a click? One important point to remember is consistency. Your navigation shouldn’t alter much when you click through to other pages. You may decide to have a second navigation when on other pages but the main way to navigate through the site should remain in the same position with the buttons in the same order. This is a very simple point but one that often is missed by many businesses.

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What does a good logo need?

If you are thinking of having a logo designed for your business, then you need to consider what it needs to say and do. A logo can be a vital part of the business and building up brand awareness. You think of some of the top companies such as MacDonald’s, Google, BT and Facebook- their logos are all quite simple but very recognisable. They instantly and consistently do what a potent logo should: Identify a brand, make it stand out and, ideally, drive customer interest and sales.

There are different types of logos that you can choose from such as wordmarks or letterforms which are logos that have the name of the company, abbreviated letters or one letter as their logos such as eBay, Google and HP. Another type of logo is pictorial logos such as Twitter, Starbucks or Pepsi are images that portray which brand the logo belongs too. These are still instantly recognisable despite not having any written words on them. Deciding on which sort you use is often a personal choice but if you have a short company name you may be able to easily fit it into your logo.

When someone looks at your logo you want them to instantly associate it with you and ensure that it gives the right impression of your business.

 

 

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Ecommerce website strategy

When designing an ecommerce website it is vital that you have a strategy in place. You need to think carefully about the process and about how people are going to get from your home page to product pages, through to completing the checkout process. You also need to consider that people may go directly to a product page from the search engine results page on Google, Bing or Yahoo for example.

The checkout process should be easy to complete and secure. You need to ensure that you ask for enough details as possibly to fulfil the order without making the process too lengthy. Some websites offer two ways to check out; one being where you can register on the site, it stores your details so you can easily place repeat orders and possibly track your orders, and two where you can check out as a guest. Guest checkout is often a quicker simpler process but sometimes means the customer cannot log back in to see order history etc. Giving your customers these two options can improve sales conversion rates.

When there are charges for delivery, it is important that you make it clear how much it is going to cost. Recent research shows that sites that do not tell you the delivery charge until right at the end of the checkout process often puts people off using them.

 

 

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Building a directory website

If you are looking to build a directory website then you need to plan very carefully how it is all going to work. You need to think about how you are going to allow people to sign up or if you want to manually take the sign ups and add them to the website yourself. This is often the cheapest way of doing it but does mean there is more work involved for yourself, adding your businesses to the directory.

The programming of a directory website is very important and for that reason you need to ensure you use a competent web programmer. You may have to fork out a bit initially to get it all p and running, but once this has been done, you can then start to make money back either from taking money for people to register on the site or by selling advertising space on the site. To sell advertising space you will need to show your potential businesses the amount of traffic your site receives and give them some sort of statistics as to how many clicks on their advert they are getting etc.

Directory websites are not for the faint hearted but can generate a good income once up and running.

 

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Finding a WordPress theme to use

If you are a developer or someone looking to design your own website then you may consider using WordPress. It is one of the largest open source website development tools on the market and can be very easy to use. When you first install WordPress it will come with a few standard themes. These themes are often quite basic and may not do everything you need them to. There are many places where you can download free themes but if you are using them for commercial use, be sure to check the license agreement first as some are only free for personal use such as setting up a private blog.

The beauty of WordPress is not only can you install a number of different themes to use you can then adapt these themes and also add Plugins. WordPress Plugins add extra functionality to the site without having to change the whole theme. Some plugins are only compatible with some themes but often you will not struggle to find them.

It is important to check before installing a plugin that it works with your version of WordPress. If not you may need to update your site or find a plugin that is.

Before changing your theme or adding any plugins it is important to back up your site, including the database where all the content is stored. Should anything go wrong you can quickly reinstate the back up.