When it comes to website design, there are three very important elements that must influence the process of developing a site which can be viewed on the Internet.

1. Customer Satisfaction.

Although this should be common sense customer satisfaction does not always take a front row seat in the priority department for many agencies. It seems that in the era of our fast paced society a lack of customer satisfaction is the status quo. Companies often rush from completing one job to the next and in the process they somehow skip steps, miss promised timelines, or fail to meet agreed upon priorities. Which comes to my next point.

2. Listening to the Customer’s Needs

The old adage that the customer is always right has been somewhat lost. Clients generally have an idea of what they want to achieve with their websites. Usually, for businesses, it is to bring in new business or increased revenue. What they often do not know; however, is how to accomplish this online in the form of their website. This should not really be a surprise, because often this is not an area of expertise for many entrepreneurs or company executives. This also does not mean that the web development firm hired to complete the website should just run ahead without consulting the client on their needs.

It takes a practiced skill to help the client identify what they want to accomplish online and what the look and feel of the website should be. This initial groundwork will certainly go a long way in understanding the overall goal of the site, and how to best achieve this within best design and development practice.

3. The Ability to Communicate with the Client

This skill of helping the client identify what they want to accomplish online can be best identified as communication. It is the process of exchanging information through various means to accomplish an understanding or shared meaning of ideas. The ability to do this well only comes with skill and practice. A good analogy of this process would be the traveller looking for directions in a foreign place using a different language. The traveller is like the website design firm looking for directions from the local: the client. Like the local who may or may not know the directions, the client may or may not know what they are looking for in their website. A good project manager in the web design firm will use all their skills to gather the information, and help the client along in their journey of conveying what they want in their website.

These skills may include interpersonal projection, asking for clarification, using probing questions to seek further details, and evaluating and explaining the process thoroughly. The client needs to know sooner than later what is possible with the budget specified, and how modifications during the website design process can increase the cost to develop the website.

Although there are many other elements that contribute to excellent website design, web designers or their project managers must be able to provide these three main aspects for the web design project to be on a successful track.

Wayne Peters is the CEO of The Creation Studio, a website design company and is located in Ontario Canada.

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

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

If you’re doing business online, your website is your store front, your virtual business location. As such, it’s critical that you use good website design principles to ensure your site reaches the maximum number of customers and prospects. Believe it or not, there are design strategies that are virtually guaranteed to improve your site’s results.

First, be sure you use clean and understandable navigation on your site. Your navigation menu should contain only what’s needed to direct your visitors around the site without confusion.

Next, you’ll want to consider the load speed of your site. Too many graphics and photos make your site load extremely slow. Use only graphics that are truly an essential part of the design. And optimize the ones you do use with an image editing program such as PhotoShop, or even an online optimizer like the one at DynamicDrive.com. The smaller your image files, the better.

Write short paragraphs and include lots of white space to make reading online easier. If paragraph are too long, break them into shorter ones so text blocks don’t look overwhelming. Large blocks of text deter people from reading the content and the content is what sells your products and services. Do all you can to get visitors to read it.

Follow compliance standards of W3.org to ensure your site is cross-browser compatible. While your site may look great in Internet Explorer, if it’s unreadable in Firefox, Chrome or Opera, you can lose a lot of visitors. Keep in mind version differences as well. Many Internet users are still surfing with older versions of IE, so be sure you consider what your site looks like to them as well.

Don’t get carried away with the number of scripts on your site, either. Too many scripts slow down the load time just like too many images. And some can even crash some browsers! Many scripts aren’t supported on all browsers, so if you rely on a script to provide important data, some of your site visitors could miss important information if the script doesn’t work properly.

Make use of tools such as stylesheets (CSS) and server side includes (SSI) to manage your content. It may not seem important when you first begin because you only have a few pages. But as your site grows CSS and SSI can save you hours of work. If you don’t know how to use them, learn. Or hire a designer who does.

Unless the purpose of your website is purely personal, you need to present a clean, professional image to the virtual world. That’s done with a clean, professional website. It requires some work, but it’s definitely achievable. And well the effort in bringing in added traffic and sales to your business site.

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Article © Darlene “Dee” Bishop and Business Support Group. All rights reserved worldwide.

Darlene ‘Dee’ Bishop is the owner of Business Support Group where she and her team of professionals provide writing and editorial services, website design and hosting, and virtual assistance to small and home-based business owners, churches and non-profit organizations.

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

Side note: Jacob Louis is the publisher of this blog, and also an excellent web developer. If you need a clean and professional look, CONTACT HIM to get an estimate.