Author: Tim K

Working on a new web design Santee can be exciting. This is your chance to build something new that improves your business. Even as you hire the most competent web design agency out there, it is critical that you do your research on the prevailing trends. In this post we will be looking at vital stats that will influence your decisions as you create your new website.

Web design and user experience
According to Econsultancy, 47% of your visitors expect your pages to load up in less than 2 seconds. The good news is that an experienced web designer Santee can help decrease the load time of your web pages. Decreasing the load time requires things like proper image sizing, caching and minimal coding. Another important stat by Adobe is that 39% of visitors will stop engaging with you if the images on your website don’t load or take long to load.

There are many things that cause a website to be slow. The excessive use of images is one of those things. A knowledgeable web designer understands this and will help you find the perfect balance of text, images, layouts and other elements to ensure the website is not only aesthetically pleasing but also functional.

Web design and content
A study by KoMarketing found that 47% of visitors first view the products and services page before browsing to the other parts of a website. This means more than half of the visitors you get will be interested in your products or services page first. This means the products or services page needs to be a priority in web design Santee. A bad experience on these pages will lead to high bounce rates.

The whole purpose of building a business website is to funnel clients in. Ensure you give attention to the pages that really matter. Less time should be spent on the executive officer profiles and more time spent on products or services as well as the about us pages.

Mobile friendliness
A research by Google concluded that 75% of users prefer the mobile friendly websites. 50% of users reported frustrations when using a design that is not mobile friendly. With this in mind, you must ensure that your web design is optimized for mobile devices. Hire a web designer Santee that can create a responsive web design that loads smoothly on both desktop computers and mobile devices regardless of the screen size.

With these statistics in mind, you will be able to build a better website for your business. The most important thing to do, however, is to hire the most dependable team for the web design project. Don’t work with a designer just because they are cheap but because they are good in what they do.

Web Design Santee

You may have the best web design Santee but once you take a look at what your competitors are doing you realize that your website is lacking in more ways than you imagined. This is why before you start working on your website you need first to review the websites of your competitors, consider the trends, and make a list of all the things you wish to see. You will also need to hire a competent web design agency to help with the design work. Here are some of the key things you need to do when shopping for a new website.

Identify your website goals
Even before you hire a web designer Santee; it is paramount that you know what you expect your new website to do for you. Do you need it to be a lead generation machine, resource center, a credibility piece, an online brochure, customer service tool or what do you have in mind. With your desired functions in mind, you will be able to define your parameters much easier.

Make a list of must-haves and would-likes
Once your goals are clear, the next step is to determine the absolute must haves. What must your website have? The list doesn’t need to be too long. The list should, however, be clear and detailed. An internal meeting with the stakeholders, employees and listening to clients’ feedbacks will help compile a comprehensive list of both must-haves and would-likes.

Set a budget
You don’t want the cost of web design Santee to go beyond your financial reach. That is why you need to set a budget range well in advance. Your web designer will be instrument in this stage. If you haven’t hire a designer yet, you can consult with web design agencies and request for detailed quotes. The amount you end up spending will also vary depending on whether you will be working with a freelancer or an established web design agency.

Know your CMS needs
It is a huge decision to select a CMS (content management system). Although it is okay to leave this decision to your developer, learning a few things about CMSs will help determine if the choice made by the designer is a sound one or not. Make sure you use a CMS that you can update yourself. Proprietary CMSs are great but they will force you to keep working with a specific web designer because you don’t own the rights to the CMS.

Ask for live websites
Last but not least, after discussing your needs with a web designer Santee, the next step is to ask them for a list of websites they have created recently. View as many live websites as you can. Can you see something that resembles what you are looking for?

Shopping for a website is not something you should rush. Always ensure you do sufficient research before starting work on the project. Remember that your website will be your online store. A poorly designed website will tarnish the reputation of your brand.

Web Design Santee

Hiring an experienced web designer Santee is the most intelligent thing to do when working on a website. The web designer understands the web development process, is familiar with the trends and will be surefooted when creating your personal or business website. The end product will be more refined than when using templates. All in all, you should understand that not every web designer will help create the masterpiece you are looking for. You need to find an agency that has the experience and resources to build the kind of website you need. Here are a few important considerations you should make before hiring a web designer.

Your project requirements
This is a no-brainer. For you to find the web designer that has everything you need to create your innovate website, you need first to understand your project needs. The complexity and scare of your project will impact the kind of team you hire. Are you looking for a large redesign or a new build with complex, custom work and tech integrations? For a small personal website, hiring an individual designer to help with web design Santee will be sufficient. Complex websites, on the other hand, require a large team. You need to compile a list of all your web design needs before you start researching local web designers.

Timeframe
How soon do you need the new website to be up and running? How soon the project gets done will depend on how complex it is and the team you end up hiring. The web design and development process involves communications, approvals, reviews, content gathering and meetings. Make sure the web designer you are hiring is not buried neck deep in work. Make sure he is available to take on your project.

Your budget
You also need to consider how much money you want to spend on web design Santee. The much you are ready to spend will determine the kind of website that the web designer creates. You also need to determine whether you want to be billed at an hourly rate or a fixed price. If you are on a tight budget, you can create a simple website then grow it as time goes.

Previous work of the designer
Looking at the previous work of a web designer will give you a rough idea on whether they can handle your project. Don’t just take their word for it. Before hiring, ask for references and visit as many live websites as you can. The key here is to check if they can create what you are looking for?

Hiring a web designer Santee is not something you should rush. Always take your time. The idea is to ensure you have someone who is not just competent to create your website but someone you feel comfortable working with.

Web Designer Santee

Hiring a web designer Santee is easy. You will be able to find the contacts of almost all the web design agencies in your area with a simple Google search. Finding the most qualified web designer, on the other hand, requires more consideration. In this post we will be looking at the top things you need to do in order to find the right professional for your web design needs.

Understands how design and copy works together
Cost, experience and reputation are the top things people look for when searching for a professional to help with their web design Santee. As much as these are important considerations, it is paramount that you hire a designer that understands how design and copy work together. The person you hire should understand the importance of using visual aesthetics to make your content more powerful. A talented web designer focuses more on the overarching user experience and the messaging that is being conveyed in the web content. They use their best practices to create a website that helps visitors find the information they need efficiently.

Must take the time to understand your goals
Communication matters a lot in web development. If the web designer starts creating your website without first understanding your objectives, the final results will be lacking. Innovative web designer come prepared to the planning sessions by first researching your brand and understanding your needs. They will be happy to listen to your creative ideas and give recommendations. Steer clear of web design agencies that are reluctant to listen to you. You are the person with the vision and the work of the designer is to bring that vision to life.

View a huge variety of live websites
To clarify that you have found the best web designer Santee for the job, you need to insist on viewing a large variety of their live websites. Don’t take their word for it. In addition to getting references, you need to take time viewing as many of their websites as you can. Can you see what you are looking for in any of their live websites? If a web designer claims to have worked in your industry, you should find at least three live websites of businesses in your industry.

Will help choose a CMS
Selecting the right Content Management System (CMS) can be tricky. There are so many to choose from. The most popular ones are WordPress, Drupal, Magento and Joomla. Proprietary CMSs are also available. A good web designer will give you solid reasons why he recommends a certain CMS for your type of website.

Should let you retain ownership rights
Last but not least, you need to make sure that you will retain ownership rights once the website is done. Some designers retain ownership of the code and CMS. Make sure your web designer relinquishes all ownership rights. That way you will not be locked into a contract.

Web Designer Santee

When you start thinking about web design Santee, the first thing you have to do is pick a good domain name and select a reliable hosting provider. Choosing the right web host is the most important thing. Remember that your web host will be the only storing your website files. If his servers are ever offline, your website will be offline. The reliability of your website depends on the services offered by the web host. In this post we will be looking at the crucial things you have to do when deciding on a web host to use.

Know the type of hosting that you need
Long before you start reviewing different hosting companies, you need to make a list of all the things that you need from a web host. How many sites will you be hosting? How many email addresses do you need? How much traffic are you planning on getting? What is your hosting budget? A personal portfolio website does not need a dedicated servicer. A high-volume online store, on the other hand will not work with shared hosting. Your web designer Santee will help determine the best resources for your website.

• Shared hosting

This is the cheapest hosting option. The websites share the resources of a single server. Shared hosting is simple and uncomplicated. It is the recommended option for small websites. You can upgrade to better packages once your website picks up.

• VPS hosting

This hosting option offers more flexibility for the fast growing websites. VPS (virtual private server) is the perfect middle ground between shared and dedicated hosting. With this option, the server is divided into virtual machines that act as independent dedicated servers. The server is still shared but resources are not depleted in peak hours as is the case with shared hosting.

• Dedicated hosting

This is for when you need maximum server resources and security. This is for the high performance websites. With this option your website uses an entire server to power it and its applications. No resources are shared. You get complete control over security systems customization, doting architecture, load balancers, operating systems and so on. This is the most expensive hosting option out there. With the cheapest web host you can expect to pay a minimum of $79.98 per month.

Know the type of website you want
The second step is to determine the type of website that you need. Do you want to create a blog, an online store, an online portfolio, a personal website or a business website? The needs are different for each of these websites.

Know the resources you need
Last but not least, you have to understand the resources that you need. This is in terms of storage, RAM, bandwidth, domains, email, uptime rates, security and support.

As you can see, selecting a web host is not as straightforward. Even after considering all the above, you have to understand how a web host pricing works and always be proactive. The reputation of the hosting company also matters a lot.

Web Design Santee

After finishing work on a web design Santee, the next step is to get a high ranking on search engine results. Most SEOs, bloggers and digital marketers optimize their websites with technical SEO, boost the quality of their content and build backlinks in every corner of the Internet. What they forget is the Position 0: Google’s answer box or the featured snippet.

What is a featured snippet?
After you ask a question in Google Search, Google shows a summary of the answer that is extracted from the website that answers it. A link to the page, page title and URL are also provided. This information is shown in a screenshot above other search results. The rich answer box is what is known as a featured snippet. It can bring you more traffic if your pages pop up in this area. The web designer Santee you work with must be familiar with the featured snippets

What you need to understand about featured snippets
There are so many reasons why you should work extra hard to get featured snippets. Here are the top reasons:

• About 13% of Google queries return a featured snippet at the top of other search results
• Approximately 97% of the featured snippets answer the question of the user correctly
• There are 4 types of featured snippets in SERPs: Paragraph (text), List (bulleted or numbered), Table and Video (from YouTube).
• Voice searches borrow answers almost exclusively from the featured snippets. 85% of paragraph snippets result in voice answers.
• 99% of featured snippets are awarded to the URLs that are on the first search results page
• Pages that earn featured snippets get 28% of all the clicks
• 85% of featured snippets are triggered by long-tail keywords

How to optimize for featured snippets
With everything else being constant, the following are factors that will increase your chances of getting featured snippets.

• Target keywords with questions. Queries that start with ‘why’ and ‘what’ return paragraph snippets 90% of the time.
• Google truncates lists with over 8 items in the snippets. Create longer lists to entice users to click your link.
• Use more visuals. Top performing featured snippets had an average of 12 images with the appropriate ALT text. You should also use landscape images that have 4:3 aspect ratios.
• 83% of websites that get featured snippets use HTTPS. If you still use HTTP, get HTTPS immediately.
• Get a minim score of 95 on Google Mobile Usability and Google Mobile Friendly.
• Pages that get featured snippets have 30 to 40 outgoing link citations in their content.
• Increase site authority by earning more links from trusted domains.
• Provide quality information including a resources section in your website.
• Break your blog post into headings and subheadings. Use many H1 to H6 tags.
• Maximize social shares and the on-page engagement like comments.

Creating the perfect web design Santee is easy. The hard part is creating a website that gets lots of traffic. Investing in the featured snippets will give you a good start.

Web Design Santee

Having the best web design Santee is not the only thing you need to excel online. For your website to be the central hub of your marketing strategy and to direct traffic and be a resource for potential clients, there are several things you will have to do. If you are planning to launch a new website or want to improve the existing one, here are the top things you should consider doing.

Add fresh content
Outdated content is the number one reason why websites fail. Visitors will not keep on coming back to a website that offers the same content. Your visitors need something fresh. To grab the attention of visitors and keep them coming back, you need to add fresh content. You need to share current information with your visitors in order to retain and drive new traffic to your site. What is more is that Google rewards sites that add fresh content continually. Even as you discuss your website needs with a web designer Santee, it is important that you ensure there is a plan in place for adding fresh content. Blogging is without doubt the best way to add fresh content to your site.

Add high quality images
The quality of your images matter a lot. Low quality images or common stock photos will not help you win the trust of new customers. Ideally, you need to make sure you only add images that are appropriate to your website and images of high resolution. Stock photos are good but don’t overuse them. Whenever possible you need to add your own photos that have been taken by a professional photographer. High quality images are the best way to break up the text. They help drive the point home easily.

Tell your visitors what to do
Your website must have calls-to-action. These are critical elements of a web design Santee. They help visitors navigate your site and make it easy to tell the story of your brand. Your website should have various CTAs in different areas. The CTA you use has to apply to the web page, desired action and part of the story that you are telling.

Make it easy to contact you
Last but not least, it has to be easy for visitors to contact you. Your contact information should be on your homepage and on every page. The idea is to make it easy for visitors to contact you whenever they want to do so. Your contact information should not just be on the contact page.

Doing these things will certainly improve your website. The list is, however, incomplete. There is a lot more you need to do. Keep up with the trends and always take a look at what your competitors are doing.

Web Design Santee

Hiring an experienced web designer Santee is the first thing you need to do when working on a business website. You want a website that will accurately position your brand and be a resource for current as well as potential clients. To be able to do this, there are a couple of things your website should have.

Professional design
In the same way you wouldn’t hire someone that comes to an interview poorly dressed; clients will not choose you if your web design is not clean and organized. It is your duty to make sure your website is not outdated, disorganized or unprofessional. Remember that first impressions matter. Users will immediately judge you based on how your website looks. In addition to that, if your website is not functional, users will not bother engaging with it at all. To create a great first impression, you need a web design Santee that is clean, organized and professional.

Clear brand messaging
This is another crucial thing your website must have. Your brand messaging should highlight the unique value proposition of your business. Upon landing on your website, visitors should be able to understand the main value proposition of your firm. The best value proposition is the one that distinguishes you from your competition.

Outline your products or services
A great web design Santee will distinctly outline your firm’s products and services. Being vague will not cut it in the competitive online market. Your website should list and explain your services. You must also add photos of your products. For your website to be effective, it must answer these questions:

• What industry are you in?
• Who is the ideal customer?
• What does the typical engagement look like?
• What is your specific process of delivering services?

Credibility and trust builders
There are so many scammers online. Clients are reluctant to send money in fear of being swindled. Your website should help build credibility. Start by educating your clients and prove to them that you are the company they need. You should build trust by educating clients through thought leadership content, allow users to leave comments, publish case studies, post testimonials and showcase your client’s logos and project galleries. You also need to invest in customer service. Respond to clients’ inquiries within a few hours.

Conversation opportunities
Last but not least, you have to make it easy for clients to engage with your business. Provide your contact information and make it easy for clients to reach out to you. Other conversation opportunities you should consider include:

• Sign up for newsletter
• Signup for a demo
• Schedule a consultation
• Download this guide
• Follow us on social media

Creating a business website is not something you should rush. Every decision you make has to be calculated. The best news is that an experienced web designer Santee will help eliminate the guesswork.

Web Designer Santee

When working on a web design Santee, you have first to select a reliable web host. The right web host will keep your website up and running consistently and with minimal downtime. A bad web host, in contrast, will be detrimental to the success of your online brand by capsizing traffic and SEO ranking. As a smart business owner, you know that even the best web host can turn out to be bad at one point in time. This is why if you run a business online you have to put in place certain levels of defense to protect your website. Here are some of the things you should consider doing.

Register domain name with a different company
Most web hosting companies offer blanket services where you register your domain with them. As much as that is convenient, it is not the wisest thing to do. Getting the domain name from a different party will keep you from being tied permanently to your hosting company. Any experienced web designer Santee knows that it is easier to move to a different hosting company when your domain name is registered with a different party.

Be careful of your payment method
The payment method you select when paying for your hosting service matters. There are three options available: PayPal, credit card and debit card. Each type of payment has its pros and cons. There have been many cases where people using debit and credit cards ended up having to cancel their cards when the hosting company refused to stop charging their card long after canceling the service. PayPal is the safest method of paying for a hosting service because it is easier to cancel any subscription.  

Pick a hosting service with a long trial period
The best thing about trial periods is that they help you evaluate the service being offered before paying for them. Long trial periods show the hosting company is confident in the quality of their services. The best hosting companies offer long full refund periods. Hostgator and SiteGround, for example offer 45 days full refund period. InMotion Hosting offers 90 days.

Avoid companies that have blacklisted IPs
There are many reasons why you need to avoid using blacklisted IPs. You don’t want emails from your domain to be blocked because the IP you are using is blocked. To check the IP, you can ask for the IP address of your website from the host and run it using blacklisted IP checkers such as www.spamhaus.org/lookup/.

There is a lot more that you can do to protect your online brand when getting a hosting service. The rule of thumb is to stick with the reputable web hosts and always compare prices and features prior to purchasing.

Web Design Santee

When it comes to web design Santee, choosing a reliable web host is the first step to keeping your website safe. The problem is that you cannot rely solely on the protection offered by your web host. To better protect your website, you need to do the following.

Don’t register your domain name with your web host
You will be amazed by how hard it is to switch from one web host to another after registering your domain name with a web host. Registering with a different party will make it easy for you to switch web hosts. That way you will not be locked to an unreliable hosting company. As a matter of fact, registering with a different party is the first thing your web designer Santee will recommend.

Back it up regularly
Backing your website up every now and then is the key to maintaining the well-being of your website. Don’t rely solely on the backup options provided by your web host. You need to make your own backups. Backing your website up ensures that you always have a recent version of it that you can use to restore in case something terrible happens such as being hacked.

Track the web host uptime
The main duty of a web host is to ensure that your website is up and running round the clock. You should, however, not take their word for it. To make sure the web host is still as reliable as he used to be, you need to conduct your own uptime tests. Uptime is the amount of time that your website is up and running, available to the visitors and clients. Anything that is not uptime is a downtime which will cost business. The hosting company you select must offer uptime guarantees of up to 99.9%. If the uptime is bad, you need to switch to another web host.

Regularly update your passwords
The easiest way for hackers to get into your website is through the login page. You don’t want valuable data to be stolen. To make sure this never happens, you have to change your passwords regularly. Use strong passwords that combine letters, numbers, upper and lower case as well as special symbols. You also need to have good anti-virus software installed on your computer.

Doing these things will significantly boost the security of your website. Never be afraid to switch to a different web host if the services you are getting are not satisfactory.

Web Design Santee