Creating a Lasting Impression: Website Considerations for Web Designers and Business Owners

                

It is said that excellently designed websites can accomplish many things - from converting a query to a sale, generate sales from visitors, or just plain information drive to clients and customers.

According to statistics, it was found that first impression do matter when it comes to website design.  Thus, regardless if your site is embedded with top of the line technologies and software, if it is not appealing to your visitors, they will go somewhere else.  Furthermore, surveys state that many online users equate credibility with website design.  And those which are perceived as good looking sites are judged as very trustworthy and functional at that.  Many website designers and business owners may not familiar with these facts. 

So whether you are a business owner, a blogger, a web designer or developer, or just a plain ordinary person who is interested with website design, here are the traits that you should consider when it comes to a website:

Major Traits of a Good Website Design

It is indeed frustrating when your web designers and developers create a website that is more of a disappointment instead of creating good impressions from your site visitors.  It is not easy building your own website. To be able to have an excellently designed website, you should know the following as the major traits of a website that has good design.

Good Visuals

It cannot be denied that websites are reliant with visuals, whether it is designed to inform, sell, or for marketing reasons.  Thus, the right photographs really matters in order to effectively relay to visitors what the site is all about.  Images allow your site visitors to be informed and share ideas they found in your sites through your visuals. 

Designed Very Simply

It is said that an excellent website is designed in a way that the layout is friendly to the eyes.  In other words, readers do not require to adjust the font or screen, do not need to scroll up and down or sideways just to read interesting contents in the site.  The whole layout or structure of the site should promote engagement among users, not to discourage them by finding too many processes and links just to access the site and its contents. 

Easy to Navigate

When you say that it is easy to navigate, it means that the content are very easy to locate and are organized in jargon that the target audience understands.  For example, services are easy to understand among many people when compared with the term “business solutions.”  If your webpage or site has a huge content list, then a search box is very vital so they have a quick way to find contents that they want to read. 

Quality Content

The content is not just for search engine optimization but for users to read and learn something new from your site.  Contents will help build relationships between your site or products and the user.  All content should be relevant to your products or purpose of the site.  Professional content will generate impression that your site is reliable and trustworthy in terms of providing interesting and updated bits of ideas and information. 

Trustworthy and Secured

It means that your site has security seals that makes site visitors confident that whatever information they provided into your site is deemed to be confidential. In addition, there should be signs assuring them that you do not host malicious wares and viruses that will harm not only their computers but their identity as well.

Take note that when you hire web designing company, always ask for portfolio and check their output based on the above ideas. 

How to Become a Web Developer

Web designers and web developers are two different things but one can be both at the same time.  Before you learn what it takes to become a web developer, it is right to start with knowing what web development is first. 

Basically, this is about working on many technical areas of a website.  The web developer takes charge of designing a working website.  You have to know that there are web designers who are also web developers and vice versa.

In order not to confuse the two, you have to bear in mind that anything performed related to uploading and running a website can be considered as web development. 

In order to become a web developer, you must possess the following:

More than basic computer knowledge – it is not enough that you know different languages of computer programming.  It is a must that you are knowledgeable in what is considered as the building blocks of website development:  HTML and CSS. 

You must know that:

CSS codes are used when you want to enhance looks and styles of the website.
HTML is the structure aspect of the website. 

Learning Beyond HTML and CSS – these are just your weapons and as a weapon, there are many uses each of this has to your web development activities.  And together with customer requirements relevant to their websites, you need to know other items like:

Ecommerce Platform – if you are developing an e-commerce website for a client, you will need to learn about Android applications and other features your clients want to make more dynamic websites for their products and company.

You need to learn different kinds of website platforms such as Blogger and figure out different settings on different themes such as those that are used in WordPress. 

You Need Research Skills – you need to find solutions about the coding language, about appropriate software to build the site.  Thus, you should be able to differentiate several languages, Java Script, Mozilla, and other Web Development Network and Infrastructures.  Yes, Google is a helpful tool for research but not everything can be Googled as results are dependent on the keywords that you used. 

You Need to Know Negotiating Skills – this skill is very important especially if you are working as a freelance web developer.  There will be clients who will scrimp on their budget yet they demand more than what is supposed to be appropriate for their budget.  You need to make them understand and know how to negotiate for terms and conditions. 

You Should Have People Skills – not all of your clients or people that you meet behave uniformly.  Thus, you should be able to adjust to different kinds of personalities so you won’t appear as abrasive to others and lose good impressions from them and eventually lose the business with them. 

In order to become a web developer and as a website design company, it is not enough that you know the language computers and web development requires. Apart from building good and impressive websites for your clients, you should also know how to deal with people. You should make harmonious relationships not only with your clients but to your future customers as well.

Decisions to Make when it comes to Web Designing

As a business owner or website owner, there are decisions that are involved before, during, and after the website is constructed. 

Here are the decisions that you have to weigh:

1.     Determining the purpose of the website.  One of the reasons why many website fail is that the purpose was not clearly defined.  For example, many expected their websites as revenue generator but what it does is only geared towards product information.  Clearly, the objectives and the actual result did not jive. 

2.     In addition, during website construction, there are also lots of distractions that steer away from the real purpose such as:

• Web designers trying to create impressions and showing off some of their skills.
• Employees trying to impress their bosses and embedded unnecessary details into the website.

3.     Determine if you want to do it on your own or hire third party service providers.  Once you have determined the objectives and the purpose of setting up a website, the next issue to tackle is who will do it.  Website development and design is a complicated process and need different kinds of skills.  Thus, you have to know if your company or you as business owners of small business have the capacity and capability to do it on your own, or do you have qualified employees to assign with the task.  Otherwise, you have to contract outside web designers to do it for you and the question is to whom will give you hire? 

4.     How will the site look like and how it will be divided into different categories? Now that you have decided who will create the website, it is time to discuss how the site will look like.  A layout will be presented and from your objectives and purpose, your web designer will also present ideas that are related to yours. You, as the decision maker should be equipped with the right analysis and ideas as inputs to web design.  What will be the directories to consider so that browsers will easily navigate your site?

5.     How will users navigate your site? After deciding on the design and subdivision of your website pages, you need to decide on how users will navigate while inside your website.  It is important that the menu is easy to find, the content users are looking for should be easily found, tabs are functional and easy to locate, search bar should be functional, and among others.

6.     Decide on the look and atmosphere of your website.  Determine how should it look like. What kind of emotion or feel do you want your site visitors will have while navigating your page? Remember that impressions are very important when it comes to websites. 

Web design companies know well that business owners have a lot to take care of when it comes to business; thus, they are usually equipped with the right communication skills to probe, uncover, and help their clients reach decisions involving website design and development. 

Negotiation Tactics that Web Designers Should Know

As a web design company, it is important that your people are equipped with many skills so that they can handle meeting with your clients, especially if it involves snagging an account.   One of the skills that they should learn is the art of negotiation. 

Negotiation is the act of dealing with people in order to make them agree on your side.  In business, it is about getting the most out of business contracts.  Web designers are not exempted from learning some tricks and tactics such as:

a)    Preparing for the big day

Negotiation starts before the actual event. You should be well informed on everything there is to know about the project and client, then putting it forward later during the conversation.  You have to arm yourself with the right questions and answers instead of basing your questions and answers on the clients’ responses.  If you are well prepared with ideas, it is easy to convince your clients and grab the account. 

b)    Make your offer very realistic

It means that you do not have to offer the sun and moon to convince your client.  You only need to give them your honest evaluation of what the project needs and how can you make it better for them.  Expound on the features, advantages, and benefits of your offer. 

c)    Determine your leverage

You should know the range of skills your team has when compared with other bidders.  Let the client be aware of what you can do and what others cannot do.  Enlighten them with your experiences and show them the results that you have produced so far. 

d)    Go for the kill always

Do not forget to keep in mind the end result and your objectives.  This way you will be reminded of the need to snag the project and help the client.  If there are weaknesses in your presentation, cure it immediately; that is why preparation is very important.  You have to review your presentation many times if possible and look for angles that will give you the advantage and the killer mode with regard to presentation and discussion.  With that in mind, always impress the customer and do not let every discussion go to the conflict route. 

e)    Assess your client first

Do your homework and find out if there are cultural nuances that you have to consider or if there are conflicting corporate values that you have to bear in mind.  This will give you an idea on how your clients behave during the negotiation process.  For example, your client might send you a team of negotiators but no decision power.  In this case, do not insist that you present your case directly with decision making power. Impress the middlemen instead so they can relay the message to the decision makers. 

Other important negotiating tactics that your people should keep in mind are; do not rush clients to understand and agree, keep discussion respectful and honest as much as possible, and be prepared to leave the negotiating table if the client is too demanding. 

When your staff at your web design company know these negotiating tactics expect that the chance of getting more accounts is increasing every day. 

What Should a Web Designer Tell You

Web designers do not only catch up with the latest in technology but also need to know intrinsic values as well such as people skills for example. As a web designer, it is important that you tell your clients that a spade is a spade.  You will never know how far your being honest will go.  Honesty is still the best policy. 

Designing a website is not an easy process if the web designer does not have the best interest of their clients in mind.  Thus, other than asking what the clients want, web designers should be able to relay some important ideas about web designing to their clients. This way, clients will be able to adjust their expectations and their own ideas on what web designing is all about and therefore result into a more fruitful relationship for both the website designer and the client and of course, produce a very functional website. 

Here are ideas that should be related to clients:

1.     Functionality versus Good Looks

Impressions do matter when it comes to web sites user experience, however, it doesn’t mean that you overwhelm them in terms of colors, graphics, and appearances and ignore if the tabs, buttons, and links for example are working or not.  It is frustrating for site visitors when they cannot find what they are searching for, when it takes them several minutes to transfer to another page in your site, when they do not get responses from your online support and among others.  Thus, you should tell your clients that there should be a balance between the site being pretty and functional.

2.     Redesigning is Probably Not the Answer

Thus, when you have a client who wants to redesign her or his web page, find out first if indeed redesigning is the solution.  In some cases, currency of content is the reason why people are not spending so much time in the page, or they find your products outdated and your clients need to update on inventories.  There are indeed lots of reasons and as a web designer, it is one of your responsibilities to find out what these are.

3.     Web Designing Need Not be Expensive

Tell your clients that web designing is not actually expensive.  This happens when you have so many competitions when it comes to grabbing the account.  You have to tell them that being expensive does not mean quality work.  Offer your portfolio voluntarily and let the client be the judge of your outputs. 

4.     Web Maintenance Should Not Hurt Your Pocket

In the same manner, web maintenance should not hurt company offers.  You can tell them that your web designing services and packages comes with web maintenance for a certain period of time and explain to them how this will help them save money at the end of the day.

5.     Being in the Pack is Alright

Sometimes, it is not alright that your site or page needs to be unique.  What's more important is that users have engaging experience and the experience they get navigating your site is translated into sales.

6.     You Are Not a Jack of All Trades

However, it doesn’t mean that you will have answers to all sorts of problems when it comes to websites.  There are people who are skilled but not experts in certain fields. 

How Web Designers Make Impressive Web Sites

There are many articles that already discussed how to become web designers.  This time, let’s deal with how a web designer is able to design impressive websites. 

Here is the list on how:

1.     They Familiarize with the Latest Trends 

One way to fail in your job is to become outdated in terms of ideas and skills.  At the rate that turnover of technology is quite fast, the tendency to be left behind is very high.  Thus, the only way to keep up and make impressive web sites is to be abreast with the latest in technology when it comes to web designing.

2.     They Know the Factors on Building Impressive Web Sites  

There are too many factors to consider and none of these are more important than the other.  Thus, as a web designer, you should know all the parameters and learn how to balance each of these to create and design not only spectacular websites but functional as well.

3.     They are Open to Constructive Criticism and Feedback 

They are not easily hurt when people tell them constructively what is wrong on their design or their work.  Feedback is very important so you will know what is wrong not only about your work but in all other things as well such as communication abilities, people relationship, and quality of work.  The only way to improve is to recognize strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats relevant to the job as web designer. 

4.     They are very Courageous

Since they are open to ideas, they are not afraid to try and learn new things.  They know that what is trending right now will be easily replaced in the coming days with new programs, software, or technology. 

5.     They only have the Best Interest of Their Clients in Mind

They are honest enough to admit that they do not want to fail but they want to protect their clients as well.  They know that their success is primarily the success of their clients.  They will explain in details why some things will work and some will fail relevant to customer requirements on their web sites. 

6.     They have a Reputation to Protect

Because of this, building or designing impressive websites become natural for web designers.  Being professional at all times is very important; thus, they learn time management as an important aspect in protecting their professionalism. 

7.     They Honed Their Skills

They do not want haphazard work; thus, they always practice what they learn in order to come up with quality work consistently.  Thus, the old saying that practice makes perfect is very relevant to their job. 

How to Create Websites that Will Make Good Impressions

You realize that it takes more than going to school and learning some skills in order to build websites that mesmerizes users. As a web designer, you really have a lot of things to do in order to build impressive websites.

The following are ideas that should be on your website to earn good impressions:

•          Good color combination – the colors that you use should speak of the kind of personality that you want to impress upon to your customers and should be based or factored on your products or services.  For example, websites that deal with food use orange and yellow while wellness products prefer green and light blue colors majorly on their websites. 

•          Text Fonts – the size and colors and the kind of font you will use should also create the kind of impression that you want to convey to your site guests. For example, if your products are geared towards senior citizens, you will naturally use large fonts so that older people can read your texts, avoid glaring colors so that it will not hurt their vision, and should use simple fonts that is easy to read like Times New Roman or Verdana for example. 

•          Images – if you do not have talent or skill with photography, better avoid doing it on your own.  There is a huge difference between pictures captured by a professional eye than those taken from personal cell phones and cameras.  If you want to impress your site visitors and make them stay or refer to your site, give them something to talk about when it comes to pictures or images in your site.

•          Complexity vs Simplicity – do not make it hard for your visitors to navigate your site.  For example, they are already in your site, so why chose to have a button that says “Enter Here to Access Site.”  Avoid embedding your site with things that will make them discouraged such as plenty of pop ups and opening of new pages to access contents. 

•          Function and Usability – first and foremost, you have to make all your buttons work and do not let them frequently see 404 notices.  This will discourage them and create impressions that your site is not reliable or even infected with worms, viruses, and other malicious content. 

5 Mistakes that You Should Avoid in Web Design

Creating web design for web sites is time consuming and can be very expensive especially if you make mistakes.  The cost of these mistakes is sometimes not quantifiable in terms of damage not only to the website but to the reputation of your client as well. 

Here are the most common mistakes a web designer should never commit or avoid when building a web site.

1.     Access Issues

It refers to the simplicity of how users can access your website or page.  Take note that users are not all equal; there are some who have certain disabilities and might be the huge chunk of users in terms of products and services being promoted.  You also have to take note of how will the site look like when accessed from smart phones or tablets.  Do not forget that there are several Internet browsers and operating systems out there, so is the site compatible with the differences?  Can users access the site using other browsing or operating systems?  An excellent web designer knows all the nuances when it comes to site and user access. 

2.     File Attachment in PDF

Did you know that most users really hate it when they come across file attachments in PDF as it breaks their momentum relevant to their site visit?  In addition, not all their printers and scanning devices are PDF friendly; thus, what they get are usually tiny fonts that are really difficult to read.  Take note that a majority of online users do not have these file formatting system. 

3.     Creating Advertisement-like Graphics and Features

Selective viewing is very rampant when it comes to site navigation.  Users choose what they want to see and they pay less attention to what they perceived as advertisements.  In details:

• Do not create glaring banners, these are automatically ignored by users especially it is shape shifting.
• Do not overload with blinking and animated images as anything that flashes are not worthy of users’ attention.
• Limit your pop–up machines and go directly to your intent. For example, avoid buttons like CLICK HERE TO ENTER SITE.

4.     Populating Screen with Many Windows

Requiring users to open many windows just to access site content is pure punishment and will really discourage visitors and users from visiting your site again.  It does not encourage users to stay on the site for a longer period of time as they become hostile to opening of new windows especially if there are too many browsers to open.  The same can be said with links; do not link a link that is already a link.  And when you link, see to it that the links are working. 

5.     Not Paying Attention to Queries

When users or site visitors access contact us buttons, it can only mean that they indeed have a problem.  The trouble starts when the contact numbers, email addresses, or the 24/7 customer chat support are not working; meaning no actual response or your people did not receive queries as the contact us and link buttons are not functioning well. 

Take note that these five mistakes are just few of the many important mistakes that happen in the web design stage of building web sites.  You can search the web to learn other mistakes that you should avoid. 

Testing Your Website:  What To Do

Testing is a crucial part of web development and web design.  In this stage, you have to sample the functionality of the website created before you proceed with adding more features and see if it is just the way you want it to be.  

Unfortunately, testing is sometimes ignored and when the site is uploaded up there over the Internet, it already created havoc. While testing is not really a cumbersome process for web designers, it can be daunting if you do not know where to start.

The truth is there is no such thing as starting from step one then ends up with the last step.  During the testing process, you look into several factors and check on them.  These are:

1.     Checking the speed of the site.  

Test it by downloading Google Chrome and other browsers to check the length of speed time changing from one page to the other.  After downloading and installing Google Chrome, go to your site, press F12 and click on the network tab to see the speed and time of your website loading pages. 

2.     Check content and context. 

While you are viewing your web page, find time to browse the content. Ask yourself, if you are one of the users, will you find the site worth spending time with?  Are the contents those that visitors are looking for?  Do you really think that the content will give answers or solutions to targeted audience? 

3.     Check also for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.  

Remember that wrong punctuations will give different meanings to your texts and messages.  Wrong spelling and grammar are annoyances to people and creates an impression that you are not professionals and lump you with other fly by night site operators whose only purpose is to scam customers. 

4.     Check the fonts if it has the right size, type of font, and color.  

One of the best ways to encourage visitors to navigate further in website is that they can read what texts because it is visible for them and not glaring to the eyes. 

5.     Check for compatibility relevant to multi-browsers.  

Require your web designer to check if the pages functions well when using rendering it.

6.     You must also require your web developer to check on the following:

a.    Live URLs

b.    Validation

c.    Code combination and compression (minify).

d.    How often and how many 404 pages did you get?

7.     Do not forget to instruct your web administrator to do the following:

·         Monitor and check pages consistently to ensure that it is available for users.

·         Ensure that there is a back-up as you will never know when there is trouble during testing period.

·         Is the site ready when it comes to security protocols?

·         Is it ready for traffic?

Those are the factors that your team should take note when testing your website.  Thus, it goes without saying that not only web designers are involved in this stage but including web developers, support staff, and of course you as the business owner. 

Designing a website is not an easy process. Indeed, there are lots of issues to consider and each of these is very important in order to have a website that is not only functional but serves the purpose of what it is intended for.  You should be eager to know all of these not only to have a great design but in order to create good impressions.