Website Design

More than 83% of your potential customers will check your website before deciding to do business with you, and their impression of your business will be determined in just a few seconds.

Your website needs to make the kind of impact that you deserve, that converts visitors into customers. Your website needs to have a positive impact on your revenue, instead of being

the money pit most business websites are.

Website designers are a dime a dozen, most know how to design a site to look pretty. Most fail at is making easy to navigate sites. Your visitors need  to easily find what they’re looking for, and move though your sales process more quickly. It's also hard for most web designers to create search engine friendly sites (most say they do, but don't really know how). Your website needs be optimized to draw free traffic from the search engines.

We follow a five step blueprint for designing a clients site.

1. Information Gathering – The first step in designing a successful web site is to gather information. Many things need to be taken into consideration when the look and feel of your site is created. Certain things to consider are: purpose, goals, target audience, content.
2. Planning – Using information gathered from phase one, it's time to put together a plan for your site. This  is where a site map is developed, mapping a list of main topic areas of the site, as well as sub-topics. In the planning phase we also help you decide what technologies should be implemented, such as interactive forms, ecommerce, flash, etc. for your web site.
3. Design – Using the information gathered up to this point, it’s time to determine the look and feel of your website. Target audience is one key factor taken into consideration. A site aimed at teenagers, for example, will look different than a site meant for a financial institution. Part of the design phase is to incorporate elements such as the company logo or colors to help strengthen the identity of your company on the web site.
4. Development – The developmental stage is the point where the web site itself is created. At this time, your web designer will take all of the individual graphic elements from the prototype and use them to create the actual, functional site.

   This is typically done by first developing the home page, followed by a “shell” for the interior pages. The shell serves as a template for the content pages of your site, as it contains the main navigational structure for the web site. Once the shell has been created, your designer will take your content and distribute it throughout the site, in the appropriate areas.

5. Testing and Delivery – At this point, your web designer will attend to the final details and test your web site. They will test things such as the complete functionality of forms or other scripts, as well last testing for last minute compatibility issues (viewing differences between different web browsers), ensuring that your web site is optimized to be viewed properly in the most recent browser versions.

   Once you give your web designer final approval, it is time to deliver the site. An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program is used to upload the web site files to your server. Most web designers offer domain name registration and web hosting services as well. Once these accounts have been setup, and your web site uploaded to the server, the site should be put through one last run-through. This is just precautionary, to confirm that all files have been uploaded correctly, and that the site continues to be fully functional.

6. Maintenance – The development of your web site is not necessarily over, though. One way to bring repeat visitors to your site is to offer new content or products on a regular basis. Most web designers will be more than happy to continue working together with you, to update the information on your web site. Many designers offer maintenance packages at reduced rates, based on how often you anticipate making changes or additions to your web site.

   If you prefer to be more hands on, and update your own content, there is something called a CMS (Content Management System) that can be implemented to your web site. This is something that would be decided upon during the Planning stage. With a CMS, your designer will utilize online software to develop a database driven site for you.

   A web site driven by a CMS gives you the ability to edit the content areas of the web site yourself. You are given access to a back-end administrative area, where you can use an online text editor (similar to a mini version of Microsoft Word). You’ll be able to edit existing content this way, or if you are feeling more adventurous, you can even add new pages and content yourself. The possibilities are endless!

   Other maintenance type items include SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SES (Search Engine Submission). This is the optimization of you web site with elements such as title, description, keyword tags, internal links, and most importantly external links which help your web site achieve higher rankings in the search engines. The previously mentioned code validation is something that plays a vital role in SEO, as well.

   There are a lot of details involved in optimizing and submitting your web site to the search engines – enough to warrant it’s own article. This is a very important step, because even though you now have a web site, you need to make sure that people can find it!