web design
Some Useful Tips when doing Web Design
Aug 17th
Information is represented and conveyed in different ways and the Internet has become an important platform for the sharing and receiving data. Web design is just one of the many forms of presenting facts and figures in a creative and comprehensive manner. Because getting web access is relatively cheaper and more convenient so majority of the population today find it extra useful. If you are trying to come up with a website that is supposed to encompass your operations and the identity of your enterprise or organization, here are some basic web design tips that you would find useful. Grids must be excellently laid out. Deciding for column widths and how much space a specific information gets needs to be a product of careful planning. This is because grid systems are vital to the over-all look of your web site. Spacing must be carefully plotted out. No matter how well-written your content or how attractive your images are, when spacing is unbalanced, your web design would still be considered substandard. Design must be consistent and coherent. Aside from serving as media for information and marketing, web designs are works of art as well. It follows that when conceptualizing a web site, design elements such as consistency and coherence are to be considered. Web Marketing Experts maintains a team of web designers that are fully adept at creating a web site that would communicate your company’s identity and market your products or services as well. For superior web design services, contact your Web Marketing Experts.
A mobile version of your site is important
Jul 7th
A recent survey conducted by the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) of 3710 respondents found 21 per cent browsed internet websites in the past 12 months at least once a day. It is predicted in over the next 2 years with better value mobile internet packages; over 52% of mobile phone users will browse the internet.
These figures suggest mobile websites has become a crucial part of websites to increase their traffic. Currently, nearly all major websites such as CNBC, CNN, The Age and more, have a mobile version.
Most might not be aware that Google has a crawler called the “Googlebot-Mobile”. A very relevant post can be found on the following link, which gives you a basic idea on how different mobile sites are. The Google blog also suggests tips on how enhance the chances of your mobile site getting indexed. Here’s the link Google Blog about mobile sites
The cost of developing a mobile version of differs depending on the complexity required. A mobile site costs around $2,000 for a very basic version to $40,000+ for a site which customizes all pages and tools. The market is still considerably young, thus there are less competition, so the prices are still quite high. I would recommend a mobile website programmer company called Appscore. We’ve had a few mobile websites developed by them and cannot be more pleased with their service. There pricing are also very reasonable.
Most websites do work on mobile phone browsers but for me, it sometimes is annoying to scroll sideways, zoom in or out. Sites which require constant zooming in and out causes hassles to browsers and in some cases, browsers leave. The aim of the game is to gain more viewers, but most importantly returning viewers. By providing them with a pleasant browsing experience, at home while browsing on their computer or while they are out on their mobile phone.
5 Essential Website Success Tactics for 2010
May 27th
Right now we’re going back … to the future! We spend a lot of time talking about the timeless SEO and internet marketing tactics. Here are the up-and-comers for the year that will continue to be important for the rest of 2010.
Google Local
It’s like ordinary SEO, only smaller and easier! Get onto that Google Local page and start prettying it up if you haven’t already done so.
Load time
This new SEO ranking factor might not carry a lot of weight, but it really is a no-brainer. Get a good host, and keep your pages lightweight.
Do your Facebook/Twitter/MySpace pages
Everybody else is on here … and if your business has dedicated fans, they are probably actually searching for your profile.
Create a mobile site
Even small, local sites need a mobile version to cater to users-on-the-go searching for goods and services through their smartphones.
Check your analytics
There’s no sense throwing money at SEO without knowing what results it is creating…
5 Website Development Stages For Usability Testing
May 18th
Usability testing has been the flavour of the week, and if you’re as fanatical about this ultra-useful web marketing activity as we are, you’ll consider doing your testing at every one of the following five stages of website development…
- Planning stage
Before you even have a rough idea of what your site will include, do usability tests on your competitors’ sites. If you haven’t already used these sites, you can even use your own team as the test subjects! - Sketch stage
When you have some rough (but not too rough) sketches on paper, take them to a user sample to see if they make sense, and if the titles are clear enough. - Site design stage
Once you have the proper design formalised, print out some sample pages and do the same as you did above. Ask your users to explain the navigation. - Prototype stage
When you have your HTML prototype up, check that your users can get around (as much as is possible) and they understand how to do key tasks - Dress rehearsal stage
When you have a complete usable version of the site, spend a fair bit of time testing before you finish everything off.
Top Excuses for Ignoring Usability Testing … and Why They’ll Cost You!
May 13th
We’ve been talking about usability testing this week – one of the internet marketing activities that most people don’t bother making the effort with. Here are the top 5 excuses we hear for not doing usability testing … and why (just like not having your homework done!) making an excuse only hurts you in the end.
Is that a REAL excuse?
- We don’t have time
If you don’t have time for testing, you’ll have to find time to redo parts of your site down the track - It costs too much money
Ditto above … besides, if you videotape your usability tests subjects, i=this internet marketing activity is actually very cheap. - We don’t understand what we’re testing
There are literally hundreds of usability and web marketing gurus to outsource this to nowadays! - I don’t know how to do usability testing
I’ll explain in a single sentence
. Grab a few people from your target market, ask them to perform the basic operations you’re expecting users to engage in on your site and give you a running mental commentary, videotape them doing so and watch where they had trouble later on. - We don’t have the equipment
What equipment? All you need is a computer, a desk and two chairs, at a minimum.
You see … there really are no excuses for ignoring the most important beginning internet marketing activity.
Focus Groups vs Usability Tests
May 11th
In SEO, analytics is the be-all and end-all. If something shows up in the numbers, it’s good … if it doesn’t, then it isn’t 
. However, you wouldn’t be the first person to realise that it’s smarter to try and test some aspects of your site before you implement them – the way you do that is with focus groups and usability testing. These two activities aren’t the same thing – here we check out the major differences in their web marketing purposes.
Focus groups
These are usually used in the design stage of a website’s development, or during a re-design. A group of users will all sit around a table and give their reactions to a page, or aspect of the site. They are better to have in the initial stages of website creation – they help sort out overall, abstract-type problems that could affect your internet marketing later down the track.
Usability tests
These are much more specific tests, aimed at getting a typical user to try to perform a task on your website. You’ll have to incorporate some usability theory into your website design long before you actually do usability testing. Here are some guidelines for good usability testing:
- Grab a couple of users to test VERY early in the picture
- You can’t test on yourself. It just doesn’t work.
- Remember that tests won’t ‘prove’ anything – they’ll guide you in a better direction. No company in the world has the budget, or the will, to actually ‘prove’ something in the usability arena.
Ideally, you’ll use both of these internet marketing pre-development tactics to ensure your site’s success!
“My Website Has a Dream…”
Apr 29th
One of the most critical parts of a web marketing campaign is the goal you have for that particular site. Without a goal, you can spend many thousands and never see any return. Today we are looking at some different goals that your website might have; keep yours firmly in mind to get the best out of your web marketing.
To fill out a contact form
In many businesses, contact needs to be made before any sales can occur – in that case you would optimise your web marketing to reflect that.
Register/subscribe to the site
You could also sell subscriptions to your site, if you have a lot of valuable, unique content. As this makes you money, it is an end in itself.
Buy a product or service
An obvious primary goal!
Subscribe to a mailing list
This is a secondary goal – you may want people to give you permission to market to them in future, to increase your chance of achieving a primary goal.
Read your content
This can be either a primary goal (like for blog sites), or a secondary goal (for blogs affiliated with corporate sites, for example).
You have to know what you want, before you tell the customer what you want them to do … and before your web marketers will know how to help you!
Top 3 Accessibility Tips for Web Pages
Apr 14th
90% of the world’s web searcher use Google when they need to find something. It is tempting to forget about that 10% in your internet marketing … until you realise exactly how many individuals that percentage translates to! The same is true of designing accessible web pages. The number of people who don’t access the web ‘normally’ is small percentage-wise, but enormous in terms of pure numbers. Today we look at the top 3 tips for creating accessible web pages.
Can your website speak to everybody?
Use alt tags
Having alt tags allows people using screen readers to know what an image on your page is. It follows that your alt tags should ideally be descriptive of what the image is!
Include a text-only version
Create a text-only version of your website, which will not only make the page load faster and work better with screen readers, but help you identify semantic gaps that you may not have realised existed when the page has its graphics and Flash elements.
Include descriptive text for audio and video files
This one is great for non-impaired users who prefer to skim-read as well! Of course, for impaired users, this is a critical step, whereas for able-bodied users it is an option.
How to Redesign Without Killing Your SEO
Apr 9th
For most website owners, managing a redesign while keeping internet marketing rankings intact is one task that is just a bit too technical. What your internet marketing firm has on hand is the book “68 Best Practices for Redesigning a Site Without Loss of Rankings’. Today we give you the ultra-short version .
Changing URLs
It is not well understood that Google does not rank domains, they rank pages. So, if you change from a .asp platform to a .php platform, all of your URLs will change, and as far as Google knows, you are a completely new site.
URL changes are managed with 301-redirects on your old pages, and eventually your new pages will start building up their own Google juice. The way you manage the redirects depends greatly on your site size and purpose … expert internet marketing advice highly recommended.
Adding Flash
Your site is doing well, and you can finally afford to add some Flash. As long as you don’t go overboard, and don’t include basic, necessary info with in Flash, you should be alright.
Changing content
Do this with ultimate restraint, if you already had great rankings. If your site wasn’t showing up in the top ten or twenty, then you can rewrite with gay abandon!
5 Things to Remember About Designing Websites for Teenagers
Apr 5th
To both adults and children alike, teenagers as a whole seem like a separate species …homo sometimes-sapiens mostly sleepius. And guess what … when it comes to designing websites, there are different things to keep in mind for teens as opposed to kids or adults, as well. Today we check out what you need to keep in mind for web marketing success in websites designed mostly for teenaged users.
The boredom factor
Turns out the teens have a lower tolerance for boredom that people of the regular homo sapiens variety. Who knew?! In terms of your website design, though, this means that:
- Video is good
- Music is good
- Flash and interactive features are good
However, sites that are difficult to figure out are also ranked as boring. So make sure your navigation is extra-clear, if you’re designing for the 13-18 year old market.
If it’s worth saying, say it big
Teenagers are just as irked by tiny fonts as their grandparents. They may not have to pull out their spectacles, but it takes too much time to read. “Boring!”
The holy grails of teen web design
Sites that find web marketing success with a teen audience often have features like:
- Instant polls
- Quizzes
- Games
- The ability to share pictures
- Ability to make comments
Simply being aware that you have a teen audience and being mindful of that when designing will often lead you naturally in the right direction.