Can Web Design be Optimized?

Your web design is the face of your business online. Through designing, you are going to make an impact on your customers. While creating any website, the basic aspects of web design are-

1. Content-The content is the substance of the website and should be relevant to the site. It should target the customers and visitors.

2. Usability-The site should be user-friendly with the interface and navigation system simple and reliable.

3. Appearance-The graphics and text should include a single style that flows throughout for consistency.

4. Visibility of the site-The site should be easy to find via most search engines. Optimization is a process of making something functional and effective. Web design optimization is a continuous process of improving the design to achieve business goals. An optimized web page loads quickly on the client’s system, so your website visitor can quickly get the information they had come for.

The reasons for optimization are varied. These include increasing download speed, increasing its search engine ranking and applying modern web standards.
Now the question arises-whether optimization of web design is possible or not. Here, we are going to discuss the ways for optimization.

1. Optimize Graphics For Web Use-Even today, a large number of people use dial up connection for web use. With slow browsing speed, they don’t want to wait for pages to load. And as a business owner, you can’t afford to loose a single customer. If you have a graphic intensive site, all you need to do is optimize your graphics for web use. Here optimizing means compressing the size of graphics for fast download.

2. Emphasize On Content-Make sure that the content of the website is laid out effectively. If you only concentrate on look and ignore the content, you can’t make an impact on your customers. You need to provide a concise, convincing message and information about your website, if you want your visitors to buy your product or service. Make sure that your content is simple and easy to understand.

3. Install A Navigation System That Compliments Search Engines-Navigation systems are built to help visitors find their way around your website. Therefore, they should be designed carefully to make them search engine friendly. Search engines need a chain of hypertext links starting at your home page that will take them page by page in your entire site. The problem is that if JavaScript and flash systems replace plain hyperlinks, the search engine may not be able to find the underlying pages. You can optimize the flash and images for better use and quick downloading.

4. Emphasize On Color, Shapes And Font Size-Things like color, shape and sizes of font can make a big impact on overall message. Using blue, green, silver, grey as color can create a calm effect. Using rounded corners instead of hard edges within your design can enable a soft and personalized feeling.

5. Keep It Simple- Look at some successful websites like Google that is very simple. Do not use bloated features. Keep your goals as well as visitor’s needs in mind when adding a feature.

June 30, 2009 · Filed Under Website Design

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Effective Web Page Design for E-Commerce

The widespread availability of high-speed Internet access has resulted in ever-greater numbers of consumers making online purchases. This means that business owners of all stripes – from individuals working from home to big box mass merchandisers – can reach more buyers and can generate exponentially greater revenue than ever before.

There are many theories about and tips for marketing and advertising your online store, and marketing and advertising is certainly a consideration. But in focusing so much attention on marketing, many business owners neglect a fundamental aspect of successful e-commerce: web page design.

If you don’t have a professional webpage design, it doesn’t matter how much traffic you generate to your site because those visitors won’t convert to customers. It’s crucial to have a website that is compelling and that makes visitors want to stay long enough to buy. Here, then, are six tips to help your web design transform visitors into customers:

1. Keep it Clean. A professional web page designer will tell you that to keep your virtual storefront clean and free of clutter. It should be immediately clear to the visitor the types of items you sell without overwhelming them with dozens of hyperlinks, fonts, and flashing buttons and words. You can certainly incorporate a flash introduction in your web design, but if you do, give the visitor control. He or she should be able to bypass or pause the flash so that the annoyance factor is kept to a minimum.

2. Intuitive Navigation. Your website designer should think like your customer and design a navigation system that easily takes your customer from your home page to the product or products of interest. The fewer number of clicks it takes to get from point A to point B, the more likely it is that your visitor will make a purchase.

3. Search Functionality. Customers need to be able to find what they need quickly and easily. Allowing customers to search by keyword or product number is a great start. Going one step further and allowing “fuzzy” searches that will also return matches for common misspellings is even better.

4. Seamless Shopping Cart. Many e-commerce sites lose customers at the critical juncture between selecting items and committing to buy them. An intuitive and easy-to-use shopping cart is essential to the online shopping experience. Again, your web page designer should think like your customer and utilize a shopping cart that makes checkout a breeze.

5. SSL Certificate. If you’re an online merchant, there’s simply no getting around the need for an SSL certificate. With the problems associated with identity theft, your customers need to have confidence that your website is secure.

6. Leave it to the Professionals. When it comes to web page design, don’t succumb to the temptation to do it yourself. Even if you have a web design program, you should hire a business web page designer to create your web site. Professionals have a variety of tools that will help your business succeed online, and will act as your partner in developing e-commerce solutions that will encourage visitors to stick around and purchase your products.

June 29, 2009 · Filed Under Website Design

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Great Hotel Marketing Starts with Hotel Website Design

You may have the most wonderful hotel in the world, with gorgeous landscaping, comfortable rooms, and impeccable service, but if guests don’t know about it, your occupancy rates will be a continual disappointment. In this day and age, the most critical component of hotel marketing is great hotel website design.

Why Hotel Website Design?

The numbers say it all. During 2010, almost a third of all hotel revenues will be generated by online channels. Moreover, over half of your target audience’s decision-making is influenced by the Internet. Over a third of hotel guests choose their hotel based on online research, but book through another channel. The remainder researched their choices through an Internet portal, but then tried to book directly with the travel provider.

Without great hotel web site design, it’s as if you printed 1,000 beautiful, four-color, ten-page brochures that stunningly captured the unique nature of your hotel at ten dollars apiece, and then locked them away in a cupboard. How effective would they be? The “look and feel” is vitally important in motivating visitors to explore your hotel product, and in guiding them to buy, but without the right technology, site structure, and navigation methods, you will only have marginal online revenues.

Hotel Search Engine Optimization

Even if you have a wonderful hotel web site design, if no one can find your website when they are searching online for that “luxury San Diego hotel,” that “romantic B&B outside Paris,” or that “adventure scuba holiday in the Maldives,” it’s as though you didn’t have a website at all.

The way that potential guests will find your hotel web site is through search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is both an art and a science – and shouldn’t be left to amateurs. Search engine optimization techniques will enable your hotel website to be returned high in the rankings of search engine results – a critical element of effective online hotel marketing.

Factors to Consider

When choosing a marketing company for your hotel website design, make sure that they understand and meet these goals:

* Generating qualified, quality visitor traffic
* Motivating visitors to delve deeper into your hotel website
* Converting visitors into online hotel revenues

Too often, hotel websites are developed in reverse, placing the emphasis on design rather than on generating website traffic. The key is to balance traffic generation effectiveness, the site’s “look and feel,” and conversion techniques to produce a hotel web site that looks great, gets plenty of traffic that converts into bookings.

Find a Hotel Website Design Company

Today, Internet design and marketing companies have specializations. In order to get the best return on investment, it’s best to choose a website design company that specializes in hotel website design. Make sure that their approach adheres to the following guidelines – otherwise, keep shopping. The company should:

* Identify your visitors’ expectations and intentions
* Work with you to clarify your own objectives
* Develop a hotel website revenue conversion strategy
* Determine site components that satisfy both design and search engine optimization goals
* Map our “click paths” that will lead to conversion

Your hotel website design and search engine optimization are the two keys to generating the kind of traffic that will keep your occupancy rates in the stratosphere!

June 28, 2009 · Filed Under Website Design