Choosing a Web Designer

Choosing a web designer is a big decision. Choosing a designer is like making a business partner so must choose him/her very carefully. Choosing a web designer can also be like choosing an interior decorator, every designer has a style or creative edge they excel on and prefer. Its not always easy, especially if you don’t have detailed knowledge of how the World Wide Web works when choosing a web design partner. Choosing a web designer is a personal choice. Choosing the right web designer is important in your business because you need someone who offers excellent customer service, is easy to talk to but who also has the necessary skills to complete your project at a reasonable rate.

Web Designers

Web Designers are often a team of workers that work in close cooperation in order to accomplish client demands or they can be an individual who works as a freelancer.

Either way, you will still need to evaluate before you choose. Sometimes it is better to go with a smaller company as you may get a better experience versus going with a big factor type company who has many different designers on staff. Of course, again, either way, you can choose the wrong company, big or small.

What to look for

Price is not alway the thing to look for. Web designers usually include links to samples of their work on their web sites or they can include them with their proposals. This is one thing to look at. Does this design firm or individual build the types of sites that I am looking to portray with my company/personal web site? Price may be a decisive factor, but look at the quality of work and the options first before looking at price.

Price

No obviously you have a budget, or if you don’t, you should before going into a project.

Many Web Designers can tailor your needs based on your budget. Some Web Designers have set prices. This just depends on the designer and/or firm. Price shouldn’t make your choice, especially if the difference is only a few hundred dollars here or there, unless of course you can’t afford it, but you on the same hand shouldn’t expect your Web Designer to build a Fortune 500 company site for 0 either. Be reasonable as Web Designers are just like you and they need to make a living too.

Support

Another thing to look for is support options. Does the company offer maintenance programs or do they offer you a way to edit your site on your own. With all the Content Management Systems out there, you shouldn’t have a problem getting a site built on one of the popular platforms. Support can also be looked at during the project. Does the company have a project manager that gives you access to voice your opinion or are you at the mercy of the designer returning your many calls and/or voicemails. Responsiveness should be on your list when choosing a Web Designer.

Trying to keep my ranting short here. Just use your common sense when choosing a Web Designer to take on your project. Building a relationship with your Designer first is not a bad idea. Test the waters with he/she/firm before you decide upon them as your go to team all the time. If you have a good relationship with your Web Designer, you can reap the rewards of many years of working together towards your common goal and that is to make your web site successful.

Shannon Cox is the owner of www.argonstudios.com. Argon Studios produces high quality Joomla! custom web design and development and has been in business for over 10 years providing work from Fortune 500 companies to small to mid-sized businesses.

Web Design | Graphic Design

An equal combination of creativity and expert skills are essential when designing a faultless website. First impressions count. Create the right looking web page with relevant information and visitors will stay on your website and explore within, however if the design and layout is poor and difficult to navigate, the visitors will quickly leave. A well-considered website with great web design will attract customers, encourage people to visit again and ultimately will boost online sales.

Web design is always going to be subjective but one thing remains true, and that is bad web design will reflect badly on your business. Good web design will reflect well. It is not necessary for the design to be complex because quite often the simple things work much better. Graphic design can also be used to great effect by introducing additional graphic design elements into the web page such as logos, images, colours, attractive buttons, flashes, characters and endorsements.

Designing for the web is different from designing for any other medium.

The skills required are vast but when you get it right the end result will be a website that is attractive, serves the purpose, promotes the brand, drives sales, provides information and above all an enjoyable experience. Graphic design and web design working together correctly is a powerful combination.

This is the internet era and people have access to websites almost everywhere on the planet. Today’s online businesses have the potential to be highly profitable without having to open a shop on the high street. This environment and online competition makes it challenging and to become more successful than your competitors you need to invest in a professional, experienced graphic and web design company.

Warren Creative have a professional, friendly team with years of experienced in graphic design and web design. Our web developers use clean and accurate code and work closely with the graphic and web designers as one unit. Our team is the combination of professional web designers, graphic designers, web developers, flash designers, web writers and illustrators, each of them experts in their area of work.

Web users today are very impatient and if they do not find the website attractive or the website takes a long time to load, then most people will click away. Our web design team optimize graphics, content, images and other files as small as possible without sacrificing quality. Our specialists use streaming media to reduce downloading time. We always remember the 10-second rule for site loading. When developing well-designed websites we always consider easy and effective website navigation. A simple, clear navigation can increase the clicks of the users which means increasing customers, sales, sign-ups or whatever your site is designed to do.

Warren Creative is a brand agency that provides graphic design and web design solutions and have extensive knowledge and experience in designing for print and the web. We offer clear tactical branding solutions and services for a complete cross-section of sectors and industries ranging from small businesses right through to large corporate companies. We help our clients to meet their objectives. Our approach is creative and practical with a professional, friendly service that is second to none.

Web Design and SEO

When we create a web design, there are two most important things that we look for. One is how attractive the design is and the second is how user-friendly and neat the website is. We tend to pay a lot of attention to the design itself because we all believe that it's the design that helps you create the type of atmosphere you want. With appropriate colors you can give the feeling you want. However, it's not an easy thing to do and only an experienced web designer can create a quality design that will depict the business model correctly and also create a smooth environment.

 

We pay attention to user-friendliness because we all believe that if our site is not easily accessible and if it doesn't look clean, then it will fend off our potential buyers. This is something very important and without proper navigation your website will fail miserably.

It should also be neat and clean because a badly cluttered website won't be liked by anyone. So, your efforts must help you get the best of your web design and these two things are important if you want to succeed as an internet business owner.

 

However, without SEO, these two things won't help you at all. You might wonder why that will happen. Well, you have a good design and it looks extremely attractive and professional. Your website is also user-friendly with neat and clean links, content and images. However, these won't benefit your business if your potential buyers are unable to find your website. See, if no one is coming to your website, then how in the world will you sell your products? If you are unable to sell your products or services, then it means your business is going down and eventually you will end up closing your site.

 

This is the very reason why SEO is important for every single business website in the world.

SEO allows you to attract the most targeted buyers. See, when we need to search something online, we simply Google. Therefore, if you appear on the first page of the results pages, then you will be able to divert the most targeted traffic to your website, when your market will search for your products. Even though you may do PPC advertisement to instantly bring traffic to your site, but all businesses, especially small businesses, are not able to afford the cost of it.

 

Even though you can bring traffic for free with SEO, but you need to know the best practices. You need to learn and implement what search engines like and you need to avoid what search engines don't like. There was a time when people did keyword stuffing and managed to boost their rankings, but those days are long gone now. You have got to have natural content and you need to know how to optimize it according to the guidelines of search engines. Once done, you will enjoy free and targeted traffic to your website.

 

So, ensure that when you create your web design, you also keep in view the latest SEO guidelines.

 

Web Design Personifies Business

No one can now deny the fact that a web design is the face of the business identity. Web design is the hybridization of art and technology. Both need to be in perfect balance and synch for the optimum utility of the website.

Competition has compelled the sellers to be buyer oriented. This insinuates that the web design has to be prepared after keeping into consideration the buyers attitude. It is the buyers market not the sellers market. When the buyer searches for any product or service he/she is first going to approach the search engines, type the relevant key words and ask the search engine to search those words/phrases. The execution of this command results in a list of websites being displayed on the monitor. The URLs that feature on the top of this list receive the maximum number of clicks and traffic.

How to feature on the top of the of the search engine list?

The more the website is friendly with the search engine the higher will it be placed in the search list. The factors that play a crucial role in this ranking are the key words, key word phrases, in coming links, outgoing links, speed of downloading, ease at navigation, compatibility with the browser, visuals and the technology used to embed them in the website. It is better to avail the services of a professional and experienced web designer and get a website that is both effective and efficient.

When the prospective buyer clicks and enters the website it is usually the home page that is displayed. Care should be taken that this page should be downloaded in the least possible time. The web page should be attractive and keep the prospective buyer glued to the website. The layout should be simple and easy to understand and navigate. If the layout is messed up and the visitor finds it difficult to find what he/she is searching for, the probability of the visitor clicking on the other website increases tremendously.

The colors used and the size of the text play a key role in appealing to the buyer. Some websites need to have bright colors while others need to be dull colored. The text size depends on the market segment targeted. If the relevance of the overall back ground presentation is more than the size of the text needs to be small but if the website is offering products or services for the elder population than the text size should be large enough to be read.

The content of web design should be convincing. It should be able to assure quality, worth and utility of the product because this can only convert a prospective buyer into a buyer. If the content of the web design fails to convince the buyer, the click and the featuring on the top of the search engine list are rendered useless. The web design should be such that the buyer should be assured about confidential data such as the username and the password of the credit card.

Web design is vital for the success of the website and the overall business. Get your business a new face in a web site designed by a professional website designer.

Copyright 2010