Archive for October, 2011

10 Questions to Ask My Web Designer

Sunday, October 30th, 2011 | Permalink

10 Questions to Ask My Web Designer

10 Questions to Ask My Web Designer

10 Questions to Ask My Web Designer

How to find a good designer so that you have a better than even chance of success with your website.  Here are 10 questions you can ask which will give you an idea if the company you plan to hire can deliver the goods.

1. What results do you get for your clients

 

When you contact a web designer ask if they publish case studies of clients they have helped.  Sometimes the designers site might have something like this on the site “the site design of xxx client has helped increase their online sales by 32%. If you see this on a site you know you are in the right place. If there are no case studies on their site ask them for some, a good designer will be able to produce case studies.

2. What are your rates for Web Design?

 

The cheapest or the most expensive is not always the best you can get. Web designing takes time so if it is too cheap you may find that the designer will take short cuts.  One way to be sure you are getting value for your money is to ask the designer for the quote and what they are quoting for. It’s better to get a breakdown of what you will be getting in the quotation. When checking the quote look for things like ‘high converting e-mail newsletter’.

 

3. Time spend on research and planning

 

Based on the questions the designer asks before starting on the website will give you a clue on how much research will be done before completing the task. You could ask the designer how much time they spend on research and expect an answer of anything between three to about ten hours on the project

 

4.  Are your websites easy to use

 

Ease of use on a website is important, it’s no use having a fancy website and it’s difficult to navigate through it. If it is too difficult your visitors will leave it and go elsewhere. Good web designers understand how visitors need to navigate and what they are looking for.

5. Does the designer use wire-frames?

 

A website wire-frame is a visual outline of where your content will be placed on the site. It consists of boxes that explain where everything will be found.

 

6.  Market research

 

For a website to be successful it needs to be geared towards your customers,  to achieve success the designer needs to understand your customer base, so the designer will need to ask about your product and service and then do research on what the customers want. Also do they do competitive research, comparison on the competition so that the results are better than what is already on the internet.

 

7.  Conversion and usability testing

 

Will the designer do a conversion and usability study of the pages, which involves the creation of two pages and to pit them one against the other to see which produces the maximum results. Ask the designer if he/she does this they should understand how to do it.

 

8.  Analysis of current traffic

 

An analysis of the sites traffic can identify strengths and weaknesses, they changes can be made to strengthen the weak points.

 

9.  How can the design help meet my goals

 

You need to ask the designer how the design of the website will meet your goals.  First you need to define your goals and then ask the designer how to meet them.

-      The percentage of overall revenue generated

-      Percentage of orders from PPC

-      The order value percentage

-      Reduction of bounce rate percentage

 

10.  Questions about their business

 

A few questions that will help you gauge the stability of designer

-      The number of years in business

-      The largest companies they have developed websites for

-      Samples of work done and results of these websites

Web 2.0 Design and Development will be able to answer your questions and ultimately design a site that will be pleasing to the eye as well as achieve results.

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Where Do I Need To Put My Money? SEO or Web Design

Sunday, October 30th, 2011 | Permalink

Where Do I Need To Put My Money? SEO or Web Design

Where Do I Need To Put My Money? SEO or Web Design

Where Do I Need To Put My Money? SEO or Web Design

This question is hotly debated on many forums on whether it is better to place your money, time and effort on the web design or on SEO, some say SEO is more important to drive traffic to your site regardless of whether it is good or bad, others say there is no point in having plenty of traffic and the design is bad so people do not stay.

A good number of people stated that both are equally important.  Good targeted traffic is important and using SEO principles to drive the traffic to the site is imperative to get visitors to notice your online business.  But keeping the visitors is equally important therefore a well-designed site that is easy to navigate, easy and quick to download, with relevant content that will keep the visitor interested plays an important part of the partnership of design and SEO.

Begin with research

To start an online business you need to research your niche first, this is the first step and could make the difference between success and failure.  Many successful people on the internet who have started businesses usually start with an idea, research to see what competition is available on that particular idea, one should bear in mind that the product and or service should be something that people would want.  If the idea is something so far fetched that only a few people might be interested, then the likelihood of it been successful is equally doubtful.

The design of your website need not be extremely fancy and loaded with lots of graphics and flash media, a neat clean site with good navigation often attracts more attention.  Many website designers have tested the internet and know which type of website goes hand in hand with a particular product or service.  Hiring a good website designer is money well worth spending as you will have a site that will function correctly, be easy to navigate; good download time with the relevant SEO tools available to ensure that it is search engine friendly.

How important is keywords and content

Once the site is set up, relevant content needs to be added to it with keywords and SEO links to attract visitors, it’s also important to pay attention to grammar and spelling and that the topic is fresh, original and interesting to read.  Some people make the mistake of taking one article and ‘spinning’ it into several articles, this could be ok if each article is placed on different sites with link backs, as long as the content is original and fresh. But often these spun articles, done with article spinners, only change words but do not match the changed words to the content of the article which results in a garbled article that does not make any sense at all.

In conclusion, an entrepreneur needs to create a balance between a good website and quality SEO to have a good chance of success.  Hiring a good web designer will help the quality of your site. Web 2.0 Design and Development can give your site that ‘oomph’ that is needed so that you can concentrate on the SEO aspect to drive quality targeted traffic to your site,   give Web 2.0 Design and Development a call and discuss your needs with them.

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How do I build my website with SEO in mind from the get go?

Sunday, October 30th, 2011 | Permalink

How do I build my website with SEO in mind from the get go?

How do I build my website with SEO in mind from the get go?

How do I build my website with SEO in mind from the get go?

 

Building or designing a website with SEO in mind you need to look at the text content, this begins with the copy on the website, what HTML ad java codes are used, the title of your webpages, the way the pictures are names, your pages URL, and the meta tags in the code.

Optimizing with SEO

SEO is the method of optimizing your pages on the website to be read by a search engine such as Google. Search engines rely on text that is descriptive and relevant to your page, therefore a website that only has flash or graphics and very little text has nothing to feedback to use about your site although it has followed a link to it.

The layout of your pages there are some important SEO concepts to consider:

  • The search engine needs to follow the links to be able t navigate your website and be able to get back to the homepage.
  • Design the site with an ordered navigation which means that each page is accessible from this navigation on the homepage. If the pages are not accessed through the homepage will confuse the search engine which in turn will force the search engine to abandon the task of indexing your pages.
  • Ensure that your coding is exact and 100% correct the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) format is not always precise and sometime add unnecessary extra coding to the page. Get to know Google’s rules for instance, as they can have some bearing on where your page is ranked.

Importance of Design and construction

Design and construction of your site also plays a part, making use of your title page, be sure that you use the HI headers and not just bolding the title. The text of your title should contain the relevant keyword in it so it is searchable by the search engine. Plain bolded text for a header will not be read as important by a search engine.

Once the main pages are completed and the copy has been added, then you need to look at additional content where you can add links to the additional content, a good link building strategy is to create great copy that people would want to naturally add their links to.

Be careful of adding to much flash to your website, search engines don’t read the flash, it reads text, you can add relevant text to the flash, but also bear in mind that large amounts of flash usually takes longer for the site to download. Many people don’t wait for sites that take too long to download, if it take too long the leave and go somewhere else also search engines penalize you for load time, so keep flash to the minimum and concentrate on relevant text.

Making use of a professional website design company means that you hire professionals who are knowledgeable about the best designs and layout of website to ensure that it is SEO friendly, Web 2.0 Design and Development will build your site with all the necessary aspects in place.  Call Web 2.0 Design and Development today.

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What Is SEO And How I Use For My Business?

Sunday, October 30th, 2011 | Permalink

What Is SEO And How I Use For My Business?

What Is SEO And How I Use For My Business?

What Is SEO And How I Use For My Business?

Any normal business needs to have a set of goals; this helps them to stay focused to ensure success.  Starting a business one needs to allocate time to

Research a niche and thus see what would work with the product or service they wish to offer their customers. In your research you may find that competitors have succeeded in a particular strategy, or marketing campaign, however, you need to make your product or service stand out against the rest in the same category, this is not always easy and a professional web design company can help you with this.

Article writing

One of the ways to obtain good SEO results is to do an article writing campaign, each article should have keywords in the copy of the article to make them searchable on the WWW.  If you are a good writer you could write the articles yourself or you could hire the services of a good copywriter who understands how important keywords and good content go hand in hand for a website owner.

Here are some tips to help use SEO in your business.

  • A well designed site that is easy to navigate is important.
  • Unique well written content
  • Use good titles and ensure that each page title is unique
  • Relevant keywords in the body of the articles as well as using keyword in the sites tags to ensure that it is correctly searchable.
  • Using images and alternate tags for each image.
  • Submission to article directories with link backs to your website.
  • Contact people and major directory sites to request reciprocal links.  Directory sites are different to search engines. There is a yahoo directory site,  Google directory site, DMOZ directory site and many more
  • Make use of anchor text that is imbedded in the links

Making use of keywords as a tool to make your site searchable, means that you need to you use keywords that will make your site easy to find on search engines to help attract visitors to your site.  No business can thrive, survive or flourish without unique visitors to the site.

To make your site easily searchable you need to have the correct keyword or keyword phrase and they must be specific to your sites purpose whether it is to sell products, services or just inform. Whatever its purpose finding the right keyword means that you need a keyword search tool, Web 2.0 Design and Development will not only design a great site for you, they can also help you with your niche product/service and do a keyword search for the best keywords/phrases to use.

Hiring professionals who know their web design business, as well as a good grounding in SEO, their experience can help you plan and execute your campaign and reach the highest amount of your target audience. Contact Web 2.0 Design and Development and you will have your website up and running and your advertising campaign well under way in a short space of time. With years of experience behind them and technicians who are friendly, approachable and are willing to help you every step of the way.

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Web Design in SEO (they go hand in hand)

Sunday, October 30th, 2011 | Permalink

Web Design in SEO (they go hand in hand)

Web Design in SEO (they go hand in hand)

Web Design in SEO (they go hand in hand)

If you are not clued up about is SEO you need to know that it stands for Search Engine optimization.  For a website to be successful it needs to be easily searchable on the World Wide Web. This is done by the optimized usage of strategic keywords.  Good design and valuable content copy on a website is what makes people want to visit is and remain on the site to read the interesting content.  However, you need to capture your audience’s attention in the first place before you are able to keep them reading what is on your site, as well as encouraging them to return time after time.

How do search engines rank my site?

Search engines such as Google, rank the site by the keyword, placing the keyword in the content of your website will allow your site to be searchable.  One of the ways to get visitors to your site is to link to other sites with your keyword embedded in the link, therefore building links with other sites with similar product or services helps increase the number of people who could visit your site.

But there is more than just creating a website and hope that it will achieve its goal. Any new entrepreneur knows that a business needs to generate sales to be successful, in a bricks and mortar business the owner will advertise by means of advertisements in newspapers, magazines, flyers, street pole advertising and other means of getting the message across they will also use their store front shop windows to attract passing trade to come into the store and browse around.

Online business

An online business, the business owner needs to use the internet to advertise this is where it is necessary for the site to be searchable using a search engine; therefore people will visit your site and browse around. Not only using search engine, to get people to visit, there are other ways to encourage visitors, by using links from other sites, online advertising using Google Adwords and other similar advertising methods visitors are tempted and encouraged to visit a site.

Hiring a web designer

For a new web entrepreneur trying to find the best way to get their business online.  There is a lot to learn for a new business owner, and one of the best ways to get started is to hire a company that does Design and Development as well as someone who understands SEO.  Web 2.0 Design and Development has the knowledge and infrastructure to be able to design a website that is Search Engine optimized to obtain the maximum results to ensure your business gets off the ground as soon as possible and remains on the first page of search engines such as Google.

The hiring of a web designer does not necessarily mean that the designer is able to apply all the necessary SEO principles to optimize a site.   Web 2.0 Design and Development technicians have fully trained web designers and well as people who are fully trained and experienced in all aspects SEO of websites and their experience in SEO principles will ensure that your website is search engine friendly, with high quality content to give your business the maximum opportunity to attain its full potential. Good web design and development and SEO go hand in hand.

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