Month: June 2019

When it comes to web design Santee, one of the things you will have to do before you start building your website is to determine the type of pages that your website needs. The number of pages you have will definitely depend on what your website is about. For a small business, here are the fundamental pages that your website should have.

Homepage

This is the first page visitors see when they enter your web address. It plays the biggest part in determining if a visitor will stay on your website or click away. This is why this page has to be as riveting as possible. It should also load fast and tell what your business is about and how you stand out from the others. Your web designer Santee should add the information that tells a visitor what your business is about and the type of products and/or services you offer. Bullet point on how your business can help a client will also be important.

About Page

Before doing business with you customers will want to learn more about you. This is where the need for an About Us page comes in. This page should include a summary of your business history and what distinguishes you from the competition. You can also add biographies and pictures of the key staffs and details on any special achievements that you have received.

Service Page

Visitors will want to see if you offer the service that they need. This page includes the list of services that you offer. If there are too many services, divide them into sections and add links to the landing page where visitors can learn more about a specific service. This page should give synopsis of the services and bullet points of all the services. Don’t forget to mention how your services differ from the ones offered by your competition.

Product Page

This page should include details on the products you sell. Begin by listing the products you offer then divide the products into categories and add links to individual product pages.

Contact Page

Visitors should be able to contact you easily. This is why you need to add a Contact Page. Don’t forget to add your email address, phone number and physical mailing address. In addition to having a Contact Page, you should make sure that your contact information is visible on every page.

These are vital pages you need to make sure your web designer Santee adds. You should also think about adding the following additional pages: FAQ page, Testimonials/reviews page, Blog, Privacy Policy Page, Terms and Condition Page, Sitemap Page and Page Not Found.

Web Design Santee

Web design Santee takes more than just finding the best template and tweaking it to your liking. There is a lot more that you need to do. If you are worried your website has not been performing as well as you would want it to, there is a good chance it lacks one or more of the following things.

Contact information

You will be amazed by the sheer number of websites that lack contact information. Regardless of what your website is about, you need to give your audiences a way to contact you. If your website lacks your contact details, audiences will be left hanging and will never return to your website. A good web designer Santee will not only add a contact page but also ensure that your contact information is visible on every page.

A blog

If you want your online marketing efforts to bear fruits you have to add a blog and keep it active. A good blog will help with search engine optimization, help you portray your brand as an expert in the industry, increase your relevance on social media among other things. A blog is the platform that allows you to speak with your audiences on a more personal level. You will be crazy not to consider having a blog for your business.

An SEO strategy

Search engine optimization is the key to reaching your target audiences. This is more so when you consider the fact that the majority of your visitors will come from search engines. Ask your web designer Santee to create an SEO strategy that targets the products and services your business offers. A thorough keyword search is a must.

Geographic information

When searching for a product or service most people want to work with a business that is within their region. This is one of the top reasons why in your web design Santee you should include your geographic information. Local SEO will also come in handy when promoting your business.

Testimonials/ case studies

People want proof before doing business with a company they just met. This is why they ask for references. One of the most important things to do after you build a website is to include testimonials from recent clients and also add case studies if you have any. That way you will be able to win the trust of new clients.

Photos and videos

As much as text is important, Internet users love videos and photos more. Your website should include custom photos and videos that make it easy for your audiences to understand concepts.

These are just the top things your website must have to excel in today’s competitive online market. The most important thing to do is to keep up with the trends.

Web Design Santee

Prior to starting work on a web design Santee, the first thing you must do is get a winning domain name. The domain name serves as the address to your website. It is what visitors’ type into their web browsers to get to your website. That being said, your domain name has the power to build or ruin your website. That is why you should focus on picking the best domain name from the start. Here are a few tips you can use to choose the best domain name.

Should be brand-able

The domain name will be the face of your company. It is the URL people will associate with your brand. You should, therefore, make it sound like your brand. When doing this, you must never insert numbers, hyphens or anything that makes your domain name unnatural or complicated. Your web designer Santee may also recommend that you use your brand name or major keyword in the domain name.

Should be pronounceable

In order for your visitors to remember the domain name and type it correctly you must also make sure that it is pronounceable. Even if your users will be less likely to say your domain name out loud, a pronounceable domain name makes it easy for your clients to share it correctly with their friends. If you cannot pronounce it correctly, spelling it will also be hard. The lesson here is to make the domain name easy for your clients to remember and type.

Keep it short

The worst thing about long domain names is that it is easy for clients to misspell them. Needless to say, if they misspell your domain name, there is a good chance they will land on another website or assume that your website no longer exists. Your domain name needs to be short but not too short. If your brand or products are referred to regularly by the initials, you can use acronyms for the domain name.

Go after the .com

The .com is the most popular extension. People will always assume that your URL ends with .com. Regardless of how catchy the new extensions are you need to stay away from them. Your first choice, regardless of the type of your business, needs to be .com.

These are the crucial things you need to do when choosing a domain name for your website. An experienced web designer Santee can help you modify or append it if necessary and also use keywords sensibly. The key is to make your domain name instantly intuitive.

Web Design Santee

If you want your efforts in web design Santee to succeed, you will have to create great content. Your website will not succeed without the help of search engine optimization (SEO). Yes it is a lot of work to create great content that is optimized for search but following these simple tips will help get the best results. Here are the important things you need to do for on-page SEO.

Identify your audience

The first thing every web designer Santee will do when creating your website is to understand your audience. The case is the same when it comes to content creation. You need to think of your audience first. Regardless of who you are targeting, your audience will always be after content that is easy to consume and digest. The right content is one that contains something that the audiences want. With your target audience in mind, you need to create content that will inform, entertain or fulfill the unique needs of your audience. Ask these questions:

• Will the audience find the content interesting?
• Will they consider the content to be funny, informative, etc.?
• Will they share the content with other people?
• Is the content and the key points easy to understand?

Lure them in with your headline

Most people hate reading. This is why when searching for information online they only click on the one that offers the answers they need. To reel your audience in, you have to create a headline that is engaging, descriptive and concise. Stick to headlines that are 140 characters long. The headline should also include one of your primary keywords. A bad headline can keep a great article from being read.

Invest more in the first paragraph

One point you must never forget when it comes to content creation is that the lead paragraph is the key to grabbing the attention of your audience. This is the introductory summary. If it doesn’t grab the attention of your readers, they will simply click away. Make the first paragraph informative. This paragraph should be enticing enough to cause the readers to read the rest of the content. Using subheadings and lists will further lure audiences in.

Links are fundamental

High quality links will increase the value of your website in the eyes of search engines. This is why you should use several quality links on your content. You also need to add links to your other content. You must, however, never participate in link schemes. Only link with purpose. When providing links to external sites, the links should give credit to the source content as well as provide context.

Keep up with the trends

In order to create relevant content you must follow the industry’s pulse. Don’t provide your audiences with obsolete content. Covering trendy topics will also help your posts become trending posts.

There is a lot more that you should do in on-page SEO including excelling with social media marketing. These first tips will, however, help you get started on the right path.

Web Design Santee

If you have done your research on web design Santee, you probably have come across the phrase, ‘content is king’. This is because you can have the best looking website in the world but if it doesn’t offer quality content it will fail. The only reason people come to your website and stay on is because you are offering great content.

Importance of good quality content

Every web designer Santee knows that visitors are not interested in your 3 pixel or 5 pixel borders. They want to gain something from your website and that is only made possible by the content. Yes visitors appreciate a great user interface but not more than great content. The majority of websites that register a high bounce rate is mostly because of poor content. No visitor will want to go back to a website that offers no value to them.

Quality content will keep visitors on your website longer and even compel them to share your content even more.  Regardless of how good looking your website is and how fast it loads, content will always remain king at the end of the day. There are two types of web content; text and media

Text

Text is what makes up the biggest part of most websites. Text is seen in both images and in text blocks. The best text is one that has been written for the web rather than being copied and pasted from other print sources. Great text content will also have quality links to help visitors get more information and also be able to take action such as contacting you or placing an order. Text must also be optimized for search using both short tail and long tail keywords.

As you work on your text content, remember that most people hate reading large blocks of text. Make use of catchy headings, subheadings and also use bullets and lists. Highlighting the important parts will also ensure readers understand what you are trying to say. To further improve your web design Santee, you must make use of white spaces.

Media

This includes images, animations, sound and videos. In the past it was referred to as multimedia. Although media is important, you have to use it in moderation else it will cause your website to be sluggish. You must also avoid using videos and audios that auto-play; they can be distracting. Last but not least, in order not to affect the load speed of your website, you should upload videos on video sharing sites and embed them on your website instead of uploading them directly to your website.

The quality of your web content will determine the success of your website. Ask your web designer Santee for advice on how to use media.

Web Design Santee

Paying attention to your web design Santee will reward you with return visitors. The mistake most people make is that of assuming that any web template will work perfectly for their needs. That is not true. Every website is unique and even when using templates you have to customize them to your needs. Here are a couple of things you need to do to create a better website.

Choose graphics with care

Graphics make it easier for you to drive your point home and also improves visual appeal. However, you need to always use graphics with care. Here are some important things you have to do as a web designer Santee:

• Optimize the images. The images need to be large enough to deliver great quality on a big monitor and small enough to allow your page to load fast. Heavy and too much images will cause your pages to load slowly.
• Use graphics that fit your content. Not every photo needs to go on your website. The graphics you use should support your content.
• Use animations sparingly. Flashing images are a distraction and can be annoying.

Stick with basic layouts

It is okay to have a complex webpage but standard layouts are the key to making it in online marketing. The use of 6 or 8 frames on your web pages will simply be overkill. A page that has to be scrolled from left to right will also confuse viewers. Yes building such a page can be fun but it will simply push visitors away. Basic layouts are familiar to viewers thus the reason they are so popular.

You also need to make use of whitespaces. White spaces make it easier to consume your web content. Graphics can also be used as an element in your page layout. For example you can wrap text around an image thereby making your image a design element.

Choose fonts carefully

You may have the best content but if your fonts are hard to read you will end up losing visitors. Nobody wants to copy and paste your content on their text editor and change the font just to understand what you are saying. Use a font that is easy to read. You also need to limit the number of fonts on your page to just three fonts.

Put your readers first

Last but not least, you have to think about your readers in web design Santee. Create a website that they can use easily and pages that are compatible with multiple browsers and mobile devices. You also need to create content that your target readers want.

Web Design Santee

When searching for a great web designer Santee, it is always a great idea to hire one from a web design agency. The reason for this is because agencies have the team you need to get your website done professionally while with individuals most of the work will have to be outsourced. To better help you understand the importance of working with an agency; we shall be looking at the three professionals you can expect to find in an agency.

Web designer

A web designer has education and experienced focused on graphics and layout. This is the team responsible for your web design Santee. Agencies hire designers who are visually artistic. Designers focus their education on design and less on building website pages. A lot of their time is spent learning HTML and how to use design software.

The web designer is the one that influences the user experience of your website the most. This is why focus has to be on the competence of web designers when choosing a web design firm to work with. Take a look at as many websites created by the agency as you can. This will give you an idea on how they work.

Web programmer

Behind the scenes is the web programmer. The work of a web programmer is to focus on the behavior of a website. Most web programmers are simply software developers skilled at specific programming languages. The team has experience using various programming languages such as PHP, Ruby, Python, Java and C++.

The only way to gauge the competence of web programmers in a web design agency is to interact with various websites that the agency has created. Do the websites work as they should? Can you spot the functionality you are looking for?

Web producer

The third team is made up of web producers. This is the team that creates and manages the content of a website. Web producers are skilled writers and have a strong understanding of online marketing and PR. Web producers also serve as intermediaries between programmers, web designers Santee and the rest of the web design agency.

As you can see, when creating a professional website, you will not be able to get all the expert skills you need to get your website done from a single web designer. This is the main reason why it is a great idea to outsource web design Santee. You will be able to accomplish more with an agency than with an individual.

Web Designer Santee

Web design Santee has come a long way from the age of static pages to more dynamic websites. Although there are many tools you can use to build your own website, it is always great to work with an expert if what you need is a professional website. When hiring a web designer, here are the 5 crucial things you have to ensure the designer will bring to the table.

Design Sense

There is a lot more to web design than simply putting together the right colors. The best web designer Santee will be knowledgeable on the elements of design and basic design principles as well as typography best practice, layout principles, how to use images and more. The designer must also consider how people will interact with your website. How your website looks has a significant impact on how success it will be. Pick a designer who gives priority to customer experience.

Mobile support

Even with the best web design you will not go far if your website doesn’t cater to mobile users. You should bear in mind that over 60% of the traffic you will get will come from mobile users. This is why the web designer you end up hiring must offer mobile support. He should be able to create for you a responsive website that is compatible with multiple devices. Your website applications must also work smoothly on any device.

SEO

Search engine optimization is a must. If your website doesn’t appear in search engine results you will not achieve the heights you desire in online marketing. The web designer Santee you hire must understand the various factors that affect your website’s search engine ranking and employ a sound strategy that boosts your ranking. Always request to see the strategy the designer will use to improve your ranking.

Web Server Administration

Knowing a little bit about the web server that your website will run on can help solve most problems as well as boost the performance. Refrain from using a web designer that feels they can ignore the server. This is because when a designer knows what a website responds to he will be able to build a better website.  

Project Management

Last but not least, your web designer should have great project management skills. Not having these skills will cause your project to take longer than it should to get done. Great project management skills will ensure that the project gets done on time.

These are vital skills you need to look for when hiring a web designer for web design Santee. Only hire a professional you feel has the skills and ability to give you the results that you need. Never forget to check their references.

Web Design Santee