Posts Tagged ‘Website Design’

   As long as there was web design there were clients asking for a fancy intro page (sometimes called a splash page). An intro page is a specially designed welcome page, meant to be the first page a person sees before entering a website. They often have fancy graphics, sound or flash animation that welcomes the visitor. They usually include a link that say “Skip Intro” or “Click here to enter site.” Although most people agree they are beautiful to look at, professional web designers and search engine optimization specialists universally agree that splash / intro pages are a BAD IDEA. Here’s why:

1. They Annoy Visitors. Visitors to your website want to get to the information on your website as quickly as possible. Intro pages waste your visitor’s time by forcing the visitor to take unnecessary steps to get to the content of your website. The main goal of a website is to provide easily accessible information to visitors and splash pages stand in their way.
2. Lower Search Engine Ranking. Two of the most important things Search Engines look for are text-based content and text-based hyperlinks, neither of which is available on a splash intro page usually. The other goal of a website is to be found by Search Engines, and intro pages make this difficult.
3. 80% of Consumers Hate Intros! Here’s a market research report done by Marketing Sherpa https://www.marketingsherpa.com/barrier.html?ident=23442
4. Newfangled did some digging into their access logs and had this to say about their findings: “The number one reason for getting rid of our splash page was that it turned away at least 25% of our site visitors, sometimes more. This percentage has actually been researched and it turns out that at least 25% of site visitors will immediately leave a site as soon as they see a  message for a Flash splash screen (even if there’s a ’skip intro’ link). Our access logs confirmed this for us and this over all the other reasons caused us to get rid of it. The opportunity to improve our creativity was not worth the loss of such a high percentage of visitors. “
5. “Click to Enter” is redundant. By visiting your site your visitor already agreed to enter it, why do they have to do it again?  It’d be like opening the door to a store only to find another door that says, “Ha-ha, just kidding.  Open this door to enter for real this time.”
6. Minimizing steps. You want to minimize the number of steps involved in reaching your offerings. Having an extra click from an intro page does not align with this idea.
7. You need to have uniform navigation. Most splash pages don’t have the same primary navigation as the rest of the site. Some even drastically change the design when you go from the intro page to the real site. This is confusing to users who respond best to navigation that is persistent. Splash pages also enforce the idea that they are visiting two separate sites.

Technorati Tags: brick and mortar business, usability, Website Design

A small company grows and moves on from a start-up status and its’ software and web development needs change. You might have gotten along initially by working with moonlighters or a freelancer because they were cheap. But let’s face it – it is not a long term strategy. Most moonlighters and freelancers will abandon ship very quickly because it’s not their primary source of income and something better usually comes along or they just lose interest. It can be a frustrating experience trying to find a new one and hand over the project to that person. Even with a software web development company you have to realize that you’re not their only client. You hired them to do a project and they did a fantastic job. Now you want to roll out a second version of your product, but that company might be busy working on other projects now and you might have to wait in line to get your new version done because this is a new project and more time needs to be allocated for it.

There is a better way! If you need things done on an ongoing basis you need to work with a company that offers an SLA (Service Level Agreement). If you require ongoing work this is the best solution for you. Main purpose of a service level agreement is to allocate time for your project in that company’s schedule to ensure that work can be done when you need it. It quantifies the minimum acceptable level of service to you by spelling out the time that will be allocated to your project on an ongoing basis, response time for regular work and emergencies, etc. You can then rest assured that your software/web project will be taken care of when you need it.

Technorati Tags: custom software development, managing website, Software and Web Development, Website Design

Building software or a website is an exciting process for any business. Dreaming up nifty features that will save you a ton of time and money and looking at other similar projects for inspiration get our creative juices flowing.

But that enthusiasm can quickly go cold if the website or software you end up with does not deliver the results you expect.  That’s why the first step in the website and software development process is one of the most important. Careful planning early on can often mean the difference between a software or a website that is a driving force of your company’s growth and one that needs to be redone one or more times shortly after its’ completion.

Good planning reaps benefits that are critical to any organization. It ensures that your project is on time and on budget and that the website or software you end up with not only is what you want but serves the needs of your organization better than any alternative.

The website and software development process is not a lot different than building a home. Knowing what kind of home you want is the first step. How will the floor be laid out? Where will each door go? How many bathrooms? Not knowing the answers to these questions before you start building guarantees trouble ahead. Realizing that you need a bay window when the house is nearly built will cost you much more time and money than if you had anticipated one from the start.

Likewise, the process of developing website and software begins with identifying what kind of website or software you need. A good development firm will not only listen to your needs but help you identify goals that you may not have realized were essential to your project’s success. Based on those needs, your developer will then draft a blueprint that lays out a design for your website or software and the steps required to achieve it.

Once you’ve seen the blueprint, you’ll then have a much clearer picture of the online “home” you’ve been working towards. A bit of tweaking here and there is normal, but now the process of actually building the website can begin on good footing.

It all begins with good planning. The process is a good one to become familiar with as you begin thinking about the website or software you want and searching for a design company that can get you to that point.

Technorati Tags: custom software development, planning, Software and Web Development, web site, Website Design

Many web site designers don’t design their sites for the search engines. This is a huge mistake because they miss out on attracting lots of free traffic. The reason is most website designers are just that – designers. Search Engine Optimization is a completely separate discipline. Your beautifully designed web site may have cost you thousands of dollars but it still needs to attract visitors to be profitable.

Here are 12 highly effective strategies for designing a search engine friendly web site:

1. Research highly targeted keywords – do this even before you begin designing otherwise you may have to go back and clean up some of your web site design. Use a keyword research tool like one of the following:
- http://www.wordtracker.com
- http://www.google.com/insights/search/#
- https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

to research the most popular keywords that pertain to the subject matter of
your web site. These tools will show how many people have searched for that particular keyword and help you come up with related keywords.

2. Create a list of approximately 100 keywords or keyword phrases that you can include within your web pages. After having completed the above research, you should have found the keywords that were searched on most frequently, but only
produce a small number of competing web sites.

3. Write a paragraph of 250 – 500 words of text for the top of each web page. Weave your keywords within this text being careful not have them so close together that your copy reads strange for your visitors. Aim to please the search engines as well as your web site visitors.

4. Optimize Meta tags – the most significant Meta tags are the title and description Meta tags. The keyword Meta tag has lost its effectiveness due to people spamming it; however include it anyway as some search engines still use
it. Include your keywords within each of these Meta tags. The title Meta tag should be a short sentence about the purpose of your site. In your description Meta tag, write a sentence on the greatest benefit of your site. Your keyword
Meta tag should include the most frequently used keywords contained within your web page.

5. Include Heading Tags – these can range from H1-H6 most designers will only use H1-H3. These tags separate each section of your web page with subheadings. The H1 tag contains the largest font and is the most significant. Within the descriptive text of these header tags you should include the keyword phrases placed in the same order as your keyword phrases that are within your keyword Meta tags.

6. Optimize images using the alt tag – write a short description for the alt tag of your image. The alt tag has 2 purposes:

a) Visitors can read the description if they can’t see the image.
b) Search engines only spider text (not images), therefore this could help your site’s rankings.

7. Reduce image size – too many images or very large images on your web page will slow down the loading time of your web site. Make sure your images have a resolution of 72ppi. Slice large images into smaller pieces with your graphics
editor.

8. Find incoming links (backward links) – web sites that link to yours raise your link popularity. Search for web sites that are compatible with yours and have a PR 4 or more to do a link exchange. Write optimized articles and include
them on your web site. This means your site has a greater chance of being indexed quickly as well as getting a boost in its rankings.

Create absolute links (i.e. http://www.domainname.com) from all your internal pages to your home page. This will increase the number of links pointing to your home page.

9. Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to implement a clean design throughout your web site. This will reduce the time to implement a consistent text (or layout) style for your web site. It will also enable you to easily update your whole site should you wish to make any future changes.

10. Place any script code into external files – when using JavaScript (i.e. for swapping images on your navigation bar) it creates a lot of code between the header tags, pushing down the text that search, engines would spider first.
Placing the script code in an external file reduces the code to just one line.

11. Insert the DOC TYPE tag at the top of every web page. A DOCTYPE ( “document type declaration”) informs the validator which version of HTML you’re using for your web pages. DOCTYPEs are a key component of compliant web pages: your
markup and CSS won’t validate without them. i.e.

[!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01
Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"]

DOCTYPES are also essential to the proper rendering and
functioning of web documents in compliant browsers like
Mozilla, IE5/Mac, and IE6/Win.

12. Write clean html code – web site editors often write extra code. This can increase the loading time of your web pages. Check your html code by running it through an html validator (http://validator.w3.org/).

Once you implement these items you will have a good base to start with. In reality this is just a beginning of a long journey and don’t be afraid to seek assistance from an expert.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Friendly, Website Design