Many people believe that having a website means a quick setup with some photos uploaded and then the site is done. What they do not realize is that website design can be a complex process that requires a certain skill set.

Recently I had a potential client tell me that I should design their website for a very small fee because he had several other web design companies quote only a few hundred dollars. That may have been true, but what he did not realize is that every site that web design goes through a process that involves several time consuming steps and that no shortcuts should be taken in the process.

Since your website is your marketing tool and represents your business, it should look at least as good as your business really is.

So, what should you think about when reviewing your own website design?

1) Does the website clearly identify what your product or service is?

One of the most encouraging methods of having someone leave a website as quickly as possible is the website that has no clear direction. If the navigation system leaves a person unsure where to go on the website, then it is best not to even have a website. After all, why would you want to confuse your potential customers? A website needs to present information and content in an organized and well planned fashion.

2) Are the graphics representative of your company?

You may have the most attractive website, but if it does not reflect your corporate branding, then it probably will not have a positive brand recognition impact. Just as a website needs to be functional and perform the way that you require it to for your business’ purpose, it needs to be designed to fit within your company’s image.

3) Would you tell your most important potential client to go to your website to learn about what you can offer them?

Just as you would not have a messy and disorganized showroom floor, or a lousy business card, your website should be a reflection of your excellent business practices. It is a reflection or extension of your business image.

4) Is there a clear and precise call to action?

A clear direction on a website will lead your potential clients or customers to take some form of action, such as filling out a quote request or to take a step to contact your business. Although a website often does not replace a living sales person, it should be a construct to engage your audience as part of your best sales and promotional material.

Putting together a website is not at all like logo design or designing a brochure, although it does take a creative process for graphic design and graphic designers are worth their time. What I mean is website design is more about knowing how to integrate both design elements and technological functionality than it is about putting a few pages on the world wide web. After all, a website is a marketing tool: your 24/7 sales force and it should lead new customers to your door and bring you new and renewed business.

Wayne Peters is the CEO of The Creation Studio, a website design company.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wayne_M_Peters

The first step in getting prepared to a web designer is to know why you want a website. What purpose do you want the website to serve. Many people start a website for enhanced promotional reach, and to create a stronger branding of an already existing business, product or service. Some people start websites to showcase their work as an artist, musician or anything else. Others just want to share information and help educate. The bottom line is having a website is almost essential if you want to keep up with the rest of the competition, but not just any website. You want a website that achieves your desired results. Here are some things to check off your list before hiring a web designer.

What is Your Call to Action?

Marketers realize that web design is essential in getting someone to take the action they want. Every good website is completely leading up to the prospect taking a specific action. Some websites are trying to get you to call them by phone. Other websites are designed to get you to sign up to the email list. Whatever action you want prospects to take, the content has to be quality to get people to stay on your page long enough to take any desired action. It is important in choosing your content to know what the desired response is, so you can lay down the bread crumbs along the right path so to speak. Often you will see red or orange colors near the call to action, because those colors increase blood flow, and make you want to take action.

Planning Pages and Choosing a Color Scheme

This is an important thing to think about before you get started, because you want to keep your main navigation consistent. The more organized you have the web pages the better. I think it’s a good idea to keep the number of buttons in the main navigation down to 7 or less web pages to making it look too busy. With a content rich site you can usually group everything in the website into a few categories, and have more pages within those 5-7 pages. Usually it’s something like this:

Home | Services | Articles | About Us | Contact | Links

Within those 6 pages you can have as many links on either side or in the middle to just about anything. The most important thing you want your visiter to see should be on the home page. You don’t want them to get board while it’s loading some huge image or intro, and leave your website.

The color scheme is also an important thing to consider. The designer can help you find the exact colors, although it’s usually good to keep the website design’s main color scheme simple. If you have too many different colors in the design it starts looking busy. Using just 1 or 2 colors makes your color rich images stand out more. Black, white and grey are neutral colors that can be used with any other colors.

Making Your Content Search Engine Friendly

It is important that your content be engaging to the reader, and while gathering your content you will want to make sure any blocks of text you use are rich with keywords and phrases to help boost your search engine ranking. To find the most effective and relevant phrases, I usually go on google adwords keyword generator to discover what the most searched phrases are with the least competition from other websites. Then I use those keywords and phrases throughout the site.

You also need to make sure your web designer puts what are called “alt tags” on the images. These make it so that people with disabilities can hover the mouse over the image, and it will speak what’s in the alt tags. Another good reason to have alt tags is that if for any reason the image doesn’t load or loads very slowly at least people will see the description in the alt tag. It’s also a good idea to have your keywords in the alt tags.

Where to Find Good Content for Your Website

Besides creating your own content, there are many free content sources available on the internet. For text content there are article databases where articles can be used royalty free in exchange for a link back to the authors website. Using these articles is a great way to build up your keyword rich content fast, and writing original content, and submitting it to these databases is a great way to get targeted links back to your website. Having targeted links back to your website helps generate more traffic, and it also helps with your search engine ranking. If you are looking for quality images then I recommend using stock photos. There are many websites that offer free stock photos, or you can pay a little bit for them. It’s better to use stock images than going and using people’s random images from the web, because you can get in trouble for copyright infringement if you aren’t careful.

Summery

Now that you’ve followed these 5 steps, and you’re ready to have your professional website designed contact me for a free initial consultation:

Jacob Louis
Multimedia Producer
http://www.webheadservice.com
jacob@webheadservice.com
828.398.4723