How to Create a Website that Drives Results

The goal of every web designer Santee is to build a website that drives results. This is not possible if your website has a high bounce rate. There are several things that cause a high bounce rate. They include having a poor web design, having outdated or unhelpful content and so on. In this post we shall be looking at the top things you should do in order to end with a website that drives results.

Have an intuitive layout

As much as it is a great thing to have a unique web design Santee, you have to ensure that your web layout is intuitive. The last thing you want is for visitors to waste time trying to figure your website out. Everything needs to be intuitive. Finding any page or content on your website should be easy. That is the key to drawing a client in. You must also make use of white space. White space makes it easy for visitors to access your content. This will keep them longer on your page.

Keep your website up-to-date

The worst mistake you can ever make is that of failing to update your website. Visitors want to be on a website that offers fresh and relevant content. If they find the same old content every time they land on your website they will move to your competition. One of the keys to creating a website that drives results is keeping your website up-to-date. It is also good to note that updating your website with fresh content is necessary for feeding search engines and boosting your online reputation. Your text must not be too long either. They should be about 500 words long and should be scan-able. This means using subheadings, highlighting important points and making use of lists.

Have a call to action

What do you want a visitor to do once they get on your website? You have to tell visitors what you expect from them. This is why you should include a field in your web design Santee for call-to-action. A call to action will make it easy for potential customers to contact or hire your business.

Don’t ignore mobile devices

More than half of the visitors that will get on your website will be doing so using their mobile devices. If your website is not mobile friendly it will end up pushing them away. Having a mobile friendly website will also boost your search engine ranking. Ask your web designer Santee to build for you a website that is optimized for mobile.

There is a lot more you can do to make your website drive results. The aforementioned tips will, however, help you get started in the right path.

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Essentials of a Small Business Website

Web design Santee has been made easy by web development tools. Anybody can now create their own website from the comfort of their home with little web development knowledge. However, if you want to create a true masterpiece you have to work with a web designer. The designer knows what makes a website great and will be able to bring your vision to life better than you ever can. If you are ready to create a small business website, here are the essential things your website will need to have.

Simple and sensible web address

The first thing you have to do when creating a website is to purchase a domain name and get reliable hosting. The domain name is what makes up your web address. Considering you want visitors to be able to find you and keep coming back, you need to select a domain name that is easy to remember, pronounce and type. The .com domain is the best extension to go with. Every experienced web designer Santee will also suggest that you avoid dashes and numbers in your domain name.

Easy to navigate sitemap

How difficult it is for a visitor to find his way around your website will determine if he will stay on or click away. This is why you need an easy to navigate site map. The navigation of your business website has to be clearly laid out so that visitors can move from point A to B with ease. Finding information on your website should not be daunting. Add clear links to the most important pages too. Your contact information must also be on every page.

Clear description of your business

The main reason people are on your website is so that they can answer the question on who you are and what you can do for them. You should answer this question on the first page visitors land on. Your website must state your name clearly and sum up your products or services on the homepage. You also need to tell visitors what you can do for them and why you are better than the competition. Keep the description short since you typically have about 3 seconds to win a visitor over.

Customer testimonials

Last but not least you have to show visitors that you are trustworthy. The best way of doing this is including customer testimonials in your web design Santee. Testimonials help build trust in potential customers.

There is a lot more that needs to be done in a small business website. The above recommendations will, however, get you started in the right direction. You must also enlist help from an experienced web designer Santee to help with web development. You can hire a designer to take over the project or on supervisory capacity.

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5 Things Every Website Should Have

Although it is possible to create your own website from the comfort of your own home, hiring an experienced web designer Santee is the wisest thing to do. Whichever option you use, it is paramount that you learn about the essential things that your website needs to have. Here are the five things that every website needs to have.

Friendly design

How your website looks matters a lot. If the design is not good it will end up repulsing most visitors. Having a great web design Santee is something you should invest in the most. You also need to understand that online visitors have a very short attention span. Your web design should be easy to navigate, have short paragraphs, use bullet points and highlight the important phrases. The website must also load at fast speeds.

Obvious call to action

Another thing your website should have is an obvious call to action. As much as visitors want to have control when on your website they also want to be told what to do next. This is where the need for a call to action comes in. The call to action might be asking visitors to sign up for your newsletter or to call you for a free quote.  The call to action must also be highlighted so that visitors don’t miss it.

Fresh, quality content

Your website needs to be update regularly. You need to add fresh content often. Having outdated content will affect your search engine ranking because search engines will assume your website is obsolete. Creating a blog for your website is very important. Here you can post fresh content every week thus keeping your website as active as possible while generating quality links and establishing yourself as an expert in your field.

Secure hosting

Nobody wants to be on an insecure website. Web browsers and antivirus software will alert Internet users right away if your website is insecure. If it is insecure you will definitely lose valuable business. The first thing you need to do is get a secure hosting platform. The hosting company you use should be secure and trustworthy. You will also need to get an SSL certificate.

Contact information

Last but not least, it must be super easy for visitors to find your contact information. In addition to including a contact us page in your web design Santee, it is imperative that you include your contact information at the top or bottom of every page. That will make it easy for potential customers to contact you.

The above list is incomplete. Doing the aforementioned things will, however, get you started in the right path. The best thing you can do is to work with an experienced web designer Santee. He will take the guesswork out of the equation.

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What are the Differences between SEO and PPC?

After creating an amazing web design Santee the next step is to promote your website so that it can be found. This is not easy. The best solutions for getting your website found are SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (Pay per Click). These are two strategies people often confuse. In this post we will help you understand the difference.

What is SEO?

The objective of search engine optimization is to increase the probability of your website being found when your target audience search for things that are related to your products and services. Success in SEO depends on the quality of your content, your selected keywords, websites you have linked to, and other things. Your web designer Santee can help with SEO. The best thing is that you don’t pay anything to get ranked. You just need to prove to search engines that your site is relevant to what your target audience is searching.

What is PPC?

Pay-per-Click is a form of search engine marketing (SEM). Here you will need to pay a publisher such as Facebook or Google, every time your ad is clicked. You only pay when consumers interact with your listing. The best thing is that you can set a budget of how much you want to pay per day. The best thing about PPC is that your website will be listed on top of search engine results. This can help you stay more competitive than SEO. PPC is the best way to get you in front of target consumers.

To decide on whether to use SEO or PPC you have to consider the statistics. Each option has its share of pros and cons. Here the stats on each option:

SEO

  • People prefer organic links than paid ones. 70% of the links users clicks are organic. Nearly 80% of users ignore the paid ads in the search results.
  • Search is the main source of traffic to websites. Beats social media by 300%.
  • SEO drives 30% of traffic and 20% of revenue.
  • Organic SEO is 5.66 times better than paid search ads.

PPC

  • Top 3 paid advertising spots get 46% of the clicks on the page.
  • Businesses earn revenue of $3 for every $1.60 spent on AdWords.
  • PPC Ads boost awareness by up to 80%.
  • Google algorithm updates do not affect PPC

Whether you use SEO or PPC will all depend on you and the amount of work you want to put in. Always consult your web designer Santee before choosing either of the options. To increase success website owners combine both SEO and PPC.

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How to Get Started with PPC Advertising

After creating your website one of the solutions your web designer Santee will recommend is the use of PPC (Pay per Click) advertising. This is because PPC is the fastest way for your new website to get recognition in the competitive online market. To achieve success with PPC there are a number of things you will have to do.

Set parameters

When considering PPC after completing work on your web design Santee, setting parameters is the first thing you should do. Without having parameters you risk using ads that are ineffective, untargeted and too expensive. Defining how the paid campaign will be used and the goals you want to accomplish will help come up with a plan that is foolproof. Do you want to create brand awareness, increase visits, and get more sales or what are your goals? You also need to set a budget for accomplishing those goals.

Your ads need to encompass the following:

  • Who you are targeting
  • Them of the campaign
  • How you will measure success
  • Type of campaigns you will run

Create your goals and goal metrics

Knowing how you will measure your goals will help determine if the campaigns are working in your favor or not. Don’t confuse goal metrics with campaign metrics. Some common PPC goals include:

  • Brand awareness. This can be measured through surveys, social engagement and direct traffic.
  • Lead generation. You can track this using the Google Ads interface through tracking pixel.
  • Offer promotion. A dedicated sign up page will help track results.
  • Sales. How much you sell based on the paid ads will help track sales.
  • Site traffic.

Choose campaign type

With PPC you need to know both where and how you advertise. There are many types of paid advertising campaigns you can pick from. The most common ones are:

  • Search ads
  • Display ads
  • Social media ads
  • Remarketing
  • Google shopping

Perform keyword research

For search engines to know when to display your ads you have to assign your ad group to a set of keywords to target. You should pick between 1 to 5 keywords per ad group. These keywords must be extremely relevant since your quality score will depend on them. Your web designer Santee can help pick keywords that are aligned to your specific theme of ad group. Create a different ad group for keywords that fall outside of one theme.

Setup Google analytics and tracking

Last but not least you need insight into how your website is performing. Google Analytics is free to use. Install it on your website. It will help you know how you are progressing. The information from PPC can be used for PPC and other things.

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Top Reasons You Should Work with a Web Design Company Instead

Hiring a web designer Santee is easy. The hard part is finding the designer who can deliver exactly what you are looking for. Working with a web design company is definitely the best bet when you want a website built. In this post we will be looking at the main reasons why you should work with a design company as opposed to working with an individual web designer.

Access more professionals

Working with an independent designer for your personal website is a good idea but if your website has several elements you will do best to hire a web design company. The reason for this is because when you get web design Santee done by a design company you will have access to a team of professionals which includes content creators, graphic designers, web designers, programmers and even a research team. This means you will end up with a website that is perfectly refined. This is unlike working with an independent designer who does everything by himself.

Professional coding

The best thing about working with a design agency is because they only work with experienced programmers. The programmers have done intensive research in web development and will guarantee that you get a concise and refined code for your website. The code is further reviewed by several experts to ensure it has no errors and that it meets the stringent standards set by the web design company. When working with a design company, you can be guaranteed of getting a bug free website that runs smoothly and fast on just any web browser.

Professional look

Nobody wants their website to look cheap. If your website looks cheap potential customers will doubt your website. People associate cheap looking websites with malicious websites. You don’t want the look of your website to impact the reputation of your brand negatively, do you? Web design companies have built many websites before yours and will be able to create for you a website that radiates the impression that you want. A professional looking website results in higher conversions.

Other benefits you can count on when working with a web design agency is better user-experience, extensive online marketing and a great competitive advantage. The only thing you need to do is make sure you hire a company with a great reputation when it comes to web design Santee. Don’t forget to take a look at their previous work. Can you spot what you are looking for in their work?

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How Does a Web Design Impact Your Bottom Line?

Web design Santee is mostly thought of in terms of aesthetics. What most people forget is that the web design plays a bigger role than just the looks. In this article we will be taking a quick look at the main ways your web design might be affecting your bottom line.

User experience

Every web designer Santee knows that the web design is the interface that visitors interact with. What this means is that if that interface is hard to use their experience will not be pleasant. With that being said, a poor design can easily cause you not to capture the attention of your audience. The web design is what directs the eye of the visitor, creates the professional presentation, increases functionality and helps build trust. The web design is also the part of your website that builds an emotional connection.

As you can see, it is very important to give more attention to the web design regardless of whether you are working on a blog or a business website. Your website must also not have annoying popups and other distracting web elements. If visitors feel annoyed, they will click away from your website. You also need to make use of clear call-to-action, intuitive sitemap and white spaces.

Search Engine Optimization

Some website owners don’t know that their web design Santee has the potential to affect their SEO negatively. Most of your new clients will find you through search engines. If your website does not rank well you will lose traffic. One of the ways web design impacts SEO is if it is loaded with too many elements that end up slowing your website. A website that takes long to load up will have a high bounce rate. This is perceived by search engines as a sign that your website is not as important. As a result your ranking will be pushed down. Design also impacts your SEO if there is poor navigation. Not having a responsive web design will also push your website’s ranking further down.

Load speed

How fast your website loads up will determine if visitors will stay on or leave. Load speed is mostly impacted by the elements on the website including images and plugins. Creating a simple website is the key to building a fast loading website. The sign up and checkout also matters. If you require shoppers to enter too many details they will leave.

As much as building a remarkable website is important, you have to keep the three facts in mind. Don’t build an attractive website that makes it hard for visitors to use your website. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

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Why You Need to Separate the Layers of Web Design

If you have any experience in web design Santee, then you know a website is made up of three layers: structure, style and behavior. The three layers work together to give your website the look and function that you need. All in all, it is good to note that even though these layers are important, you should always consider using external script files. The three layers should also be separated for these key reasons.

Shared resources

When the JavaScript or CSS file is created externally, any page on your website will be able to use that file. This is a great thing because when you change that file to make changes to the typographic styles on your website, every other page that uses the style-sheet will get the change. An experienced web designer Santee will recommend creating these files externally because you will not need to edit every page individually to update the look.

Faster downloads

Separating the layers of your website will also offer the benefit of boosting the overall performance of your web page. This is because when you are sharing the style-sheet or script, when a visitor opens one page the script or style sheet will be cached by their web browser. What this means is that when opening other pages the browser will not have to download the script or stylesheets again. This is because the shared resources will already be on his browser’s cache. Other pages that are requested will load much faster. This will improve the page performance and speed.

SEO

Studies have shown that websites that have clear separation of structure and style tend to perform better for search engines. This is because the search engines are able to crawl the content more efficiently and understand a page without getting bogged down in the visual style as well as behavior information. Your web designer Santee will hence recommend using external stylesheets so as to boost SEO.

Accessibility

External script and style sheets files are more accessible to both browsers and people. Software like screen readers are able to use structure style easily without dealing with other styles that are unreadable.

Backward compatibility

Another key reason why you should consider the use of external style sheets in web design Santee is because it will make your website backward compatible. You website will be both browser and device compatible because where CSS styles or JavaScript cannot be used visitors will view the HTML.

The above are just the main reasons why you should separate the layers of your website. For an even better web performance, always work with an experienced web designer. Don’t rely on guesswork when creating your website.

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An Overview of the Three Layers of Web Design

As you plan for web design Santee, you have to think about the three layers of web design. Every website that is created combines structure, style and behavior. These are the three layers of a web design. Experienced web designers liken web development to a three-legged stool. The three legs are structure, style and behavior. A website will not perform efficiently if it lacks any of these three layers. Let’s take a look at the three layers.

Structure layer

This is the layer made up of the underlying HTML code. Solid HTML is the same as the foundation of a house. The rest of a website is built around the solid foundation created by HTML. The structure area is where the content of your website is stored. The HTML structure can be made up of images and text and will also include hyperlinks that the visitors use to navigate a website. All this has to be coded in standards-compliance HTML5 and includes images, text and multimedia.

Your web designer Santee will represent every aspect of your website’s content in the structure layer. What this means is that visitors who have turned off JavaScript or whose browser cannot view CSS will still be able to see and use the functionalities of your website.

Styles layer

This is the layer that dictates how the structured HTML document will appear to a visitor. It is defined by CSS. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) contain stylistic instructions for documents on how they should be displayed in a browser. The style layer includes the media queries that change a website’s display depending on the screen size and device. The visual styles reside in external style-sheet. Multiple style-sheets can be used. It is, however, good to note that every CSS file will require an HTTP request in order to fetch it. What this means is that the overuse of style-sheets will impact the overall performance of your website.

Behavior layer

This is the layer that causes a website to be interactive. It is what enables web pages to respond to the actions of a user as well as change depending on the set conditions. The language used in the behavior layer is JavaScript. It is also not uncommon for a web designer Santee to use PHP and CGI.

The behavior layer is the layer that is activated directly in a web browser. The layer is used to interact with the Document Object Model. Creating valid HTML is crucial for Document Object Model interactions in behavior layer. To optimize speed, use external script files when building in behavior layer.

As you can see, web design Santee takes more than what visitors can see. This is why you need to hire an experienced web designer to help with the development.

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