Often people rush straight into the design stage of website development without actually really working out their objectives for the site. You really need to start with an online marketing strategy before you do anything else. Once you have this in place design needs to start with your landing pages, these are those pages that people will ‘land’ on when they visit your website. Usually the most visited page will be your home page although if you have a PPC campaign running or are targeting specific keywords in your search marketing strategy then this may include other pages on your site.

These are the most important pages to design in the right way, if you don’t then people won’t hang around and you will have missed out on the opportunity of converting that visitor into a lead for your business. So where to start, well you need to consider the following:

1. What content needs to be on your landing page?

You want your most critical information to be on your landing page, the things that will help someone make a decision about whether they are in the right place and what they need to do next. It needs to be instantly recognisable that you do what the visitor is looking for. You must have your phone/email on your page and also your call to actions, any sign up opportunity whether it’s to download an e-book or subscribe to your newsletter. Anything else can be left for other pages, things like Company information and history just shouldn’t take centre stage.

2. Who is gooing to land on your page?

You may have different types of visitor come to your website, for example clients or prospects, people looking to work for you, the media and many more. Think about the types of people that are likely to visit, who are your most critical visitors and design your landing page with those people in mind. If you have more than one group that fall into this category then think about setting up different landing pages for each group.

3. What do you want people to do

What action do you want visitors to take when they visit your website? Your design should help them to be able to take that action easily and quickly, make sure these call to actions stand out and that you keep your page clean and simple to avoid the eye being distracted away from this more important action.

If you have thought about these things thoroughly then you are ready to start on your website landing page design.

Whilst it’s vitally important to make sure that you get the right people to visit your site in the volumes that are going to help you achieve your overall business goals. It’s equally important what they do when they get there and this will be a result of what they find when they land on your web pages. User experience is fundamental in the success or failure of any website and this starts with the content that you fill those pages up with.

Your menu structure and how visitors to your site navigate is really where you should start, there are some key pieces of information that people expect to see in certain places on your site and this should remain consistent throughout.

It should be instantly obvious what the site is about and one of the easiest ways to do this is through images, either a small top banner or images on the page, you have just a few seconds to convince someone that they have reached the right place and this is much easier to do quickly through images rather than words.

Think about the way you present your words, the way people read online is very different to the way they would read a magazine or leaflet, you need to take into account the fact that most will skim through your words so by keeping the page interesting you are more likely to encourage people to read a little more. Regardless of this, ensure that your key information comes across loud and clear and there are again certain positions on a page where you should be placing all of your most important messages.

Using white space is also important. You do not need to cram in as much as you can, in fact this just ends up messy and confuses the visitor to your site as to what they are suppoed to do. Ensure that your text is easy to read and use spacing to seperate text into bite sized pieces which are much easier for people to digest.

Use images to illustrate your text and ‘wrap’ your text around it to create a professional look and feel. Ensure you have a small white space around the image so that you don’t end up with everything looking all squashed up.

Avoid flash at all costs, search engines can’t read flash, Apple don’t support it and it distracts from what you actually want people to do. You want people to take certain actions on each page, make sure it is easy to do so and do not detract attention away from that with unnecessary movement on the page. rolling images are great when the movement is subtle, but don’t make it impossible for someone to read.

Use video to illustrate your product/service it is a great tool and helps the user better understand what your business can offer them.

And lastly remember that your website is representing your company and should create the right image, but more than that make sure your brand is consistent throughout all of your online and offline marketing.

There can sometimes be a bit of confusion around the differences between a blog and a website, particularly since you can have a website that is derived from a blog. In face many of the websites we build now are done using WordPress which is traditionally known as a blogging platform. The first thing is to understand what each of these different things are for:

Designing your Website

A business website will usually have one or a combination of these functions:

• To provide information to exisitng and potential customers (a brochure site)
• To generate new leads
• To create online sales

This is it in it’s simplest form, so the whole aim of a website when you look at these objectives is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to your site to be able to take the relevant action that leads to these outcomes. So a website design is really a balance between the look and feel of a site against what we call Conversion Architecture – structuring the site that encourages people to take certain actions.

Designing a Blog

A blog is a a type of website that is there to engage with it’s audience, it should be a kind of diary that keeps it’s readers informed about a particular person, company or subject. It is not a platform for selling and to try and do so will ultimately end up with you turning your readers off and disappearing off somewhere else. It should be interactive and so have the ability for readers to leave comments.

If it’s a business blog then of course it should have a consistent look and feel but the structure of the pages is slightly different. There should be an area with different categories listed so that people can find blog posts about a specific area they are interested. There is often what we call a tag cloud too, which shows those subjects that are written about the most.

So if you are thinking about your new website design or blog design then just take into consideration the purpose of each of these things so that visitors to your sites know where they are and what the function of each actually is.

Because I focus so much on what you do when you have a website, it is easy for people to forget that we are a full service agency based in Essex which means that we do everything.  From initial design through to analytics and reporting and everything in between, I ofen get asked what makes us different from everyone else and I think the simplist way to answer this is that we look at it from a marketing point of view.  We use great design and the latest technology to achieve results for our clients and those results come from marketing their business to the right people in the right way.

It is all very well having website designers put together a beautiful site but what is the point if it doesn’t generate any business for you.  Of course we have this capability and it is very important but we really see ourselves as extension of our clients business, we become their online marketing department, helping bring their business goals to fruition.

So next time you are searching for an Essex based website designer think about what you really want, there are so many fantastic designers out there that simply have no idea how to market a business or how to build a site that is aimed at converting visitors into new customers and this is exactly the thing that we base our whole business on.

So apologies for taking up space in my blog to talk about our business, I don’t do it very often, but every now and again I just feel like I need to clarify a few things.  I have a bit of a mission to educate businesses about online marketing and I admit I get a little too passionate about it. And remember please, we are not just Essex based website designers but a whole lot more too.

Landing pages are exactly that, they are the pages that people first get to (land on) when they visit your website.  When designing a website these are the most important pages to consider, you have just seconds to convince someone that they are in the right place and that it is easy for them to find what they are looking for.  The first thing I would mention is that it is really important that you think about your business and choose images and an overall design that represents it properly.  I have seen so many websites where there homepage has some random image on it and therefore it takes that little bit longer to try and determine whether this is indeed a website that can help fulfill my individual need.

Layout

The layout of your landing pages is incredibly important, there have been lots of studies about how people read webpages and where certain elements should be placed.  As a general guide, you contact details should be top right, your logo top left and an easily visible menu which is either towards the top of the page or on the left hand side.  People read in a kind of F shape so you need to ensure that your most important information is here.  Oh, don’t waste valuable space talking about how lovely it is for them to have visited your website and then spouting off a story about the history of your company, people don’t care.

Colours

Don’t use too many, ensure that what you do have fits in with your overall brand and don’t use red or black unless you are involed in cars, fashion or music.  It just doesn’t work.  Make sure that people can easily read the text you have on the page, try to avoid white writing on a dark background as firstly it’s more difficult to read and secondly if someone wants to copy and paste some of your text for future reference then they won’t be able to.

Words

Write you web copy with search engines in mind, get to the crux of what your business can do to help solve someones problem.  Don’t use too many or too few words, includes links to other relvant pages in appropriate so that people can navigate easily.  Make sure your menu titles make sense to people, try and stay away from jargon.  You need to approach this with very easy to understand English and remember that most of the people visiting the site won’t necessarily know much about the industry you are in so use words that people will understand.

Images

Images are great, but referring back to an earlier point about where to put certain information, don’t take up half of the page with a massive banner, people rarely scroll down below the fold of the page and you are likely to lose people.  Also, don’t use too many images and those that you do use, ensure they are small in file size so that it doesn’t take days for the page to load as people will just leave the website and it will have an impact on your search engine rankings.

Call to Actions

People want a simple life, make your call to actions clear and concise so that it is obvious at to what action people need to do next, have them situated in the most viewed part of the page (yes, it’s that f shape again), the easier your make it for people to take action, the more likely they will and therefore the more leads you will get.  Simple heh!

Measurement

I bang on about it all the time, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to measure what you do.  Try testing two different landing pages to see which one works best (A/B Testing) then continue to tweak and change to continually improve.

Most of all, remember that this is all about the people that visit your website and not about you, tell people what they want to know, help them find what they are looking for and make it easy for them to purchase, call, email etc..  If you take these steps then you will go a long way towards improving your conversion rates.

Your homepage is most likely the first page that people will visit, so when designing a home page for a website it’s important to follow some tried and tested methods in terms of layout.  Here are some tips for where certain elements should be placed on the page:

Your contact details should be at the top of the page and clearly visible, usually located top right in the header, if you hide your contact details away then less people will contact you, it’s that simple.

In keeping with your branding, make sure your logo is on display, if you don’t have one then you should consider getting a logo professionally designed.  It is likely that it will be with you for a long time.

Ensure you have a menu which is either top or LH side, your menu needs to have clear wording so people understand where they need to go and keep it simple, don’t overcrowd it with too many options.

Banners can create a good visual effect; they can give a business the opportunity to display images and information about their business in an effective way.  This can be either static or in slideshow format, but don’t go down the route of using flash.  You don’t have to have a banner but it is a very simple way of making your homepage visually engaging.

Make sure you have your most important information at the beginning of your text, so many are about welcoming people to their website and offering up company information.  Sorry to damage your ego here but people really don’t care; they just want to be able to quickly make a decision about whether this website provides the information/products/services that they were looking for.

Lastly as an overall tip, make sure that your homepage is consistent with the rest of the website, keep it clean and simple and don’t get so hung up on the design elements that you lose the focus of what you are trying to achieve

The internet holds such a wide range of opportunities and yet it can be overwhelming for some, too much choice can send our brains racing with information overload.  There are so many ways in which online marketing can benefit a business that it really requires one to work they way through the minefield and make the most of what is a available to them.

Having a website it something that most businesses see as a necessity now, but there are so many poorly designed sites out there.  It’s an area that tends to lack investment and proper thought with many companies basing their site on what they want to tell people rather than what people actually want to know.

Some things to avoid when designing a website

One of the mistakes that amateurs make in the field of wedsite design, is cross browser testings.  Not everybody uses Internet Explorer and you need to ensure that your website appears correctly in all of the most popular browsers (Firefox, IE, Safari, Chrome).

Designing a simple site is also important, a cluttered design with too much going on will confuse the visitor and damage their experience.  If someone can’t find what they want almost immediately then they will simply look elsewhere.

Keep everything consistent, make sure you use the same font and colours throughout and that the whole site looks unified.  By doing so you will help other factors that search engines take into account such as website loading speeds, increased usability which can create a much more popular site will also in turn help your search engine results.

How to Engage a visitor

The layout and ease of use is vital, but when designing a website it is important to get the balance right between this and having a great design too.  One of the ways you can help to engage visitors when they visit is giving them a more interactive experience, things like video and allowing blog comments will help to keep people on the website in the first place.

So in summary, it’s important to make sure your website looks right and creates the right image for your business, but it also needs to be easy to use in all browsers and encourage visitors to your website to stay there a bit longer and interact with your business.  There is of course a lot more to it that discussed here, but if you keep to these simple rules then you can’t go too far wrong when designing a website.

This week we launched our newest site  http://www.radiatorvalvesonline.com this was a website design and development of an existing e-commerce site.  Up until now orders had been processed all via Paypal only and why this was fine they wanted to implement a payment gateway and have a more professional website.

We came up with two initial designs which were then tweaked to come up with the finished product.  We then built the site, we chose prestashop for the e-commerce element of the website and integrated the payment gateway so the website now accepts visa and mastercard payments as well as paypal.

The range of products on offer was also expanded and this is something that is planned to continue and so the requirement was for a solution that allowed this easily alongside visibility of orders placed, email notification and analytics.

The website predominantly sells automatic radiator valves which are easily fitted onto a radiator to alleviate the need to manually bleed.  As a result of them keeping the air at bay, the idea is that the radiators will be more efficient, remain hot to the top and ultimately save you money on your heating bill.  The most popular two products are the HV30C valve which fits modern radiators and the micro which fits older style radiators.  The new range includes good value designer radiators but the company are always looking our for new suppliers, so feel free to get in touch if you have something that you think would complement the current range.

If you don’t already have one, then you may want to consider investing in a mobile website.  With 20% of all searches now performed on a mobile device having a website that can easily be viewed will become more and more important.  As with any kind of search, a mobile searcher is looking to access information quickly and easily and it is likely that your current website just won’t do the job.  A mobile website is a much simpler site, normally with just a few pages, it is specifically designed to be viewed using a mobile device and so each page has less information on it.

You don’t need to worry about confusing people as your mobile website is hosted on the same url as your current website, it will know which format to display depending on what the user has.  Not only will a mobile site help your users to navigate easily and quickly, but it will help your search engine ranking on mobile devies as a search engine will favour a mobile website over a non mobile website.

There is nothing worse that struggling to get to the page you want to because the buttons are too small, or having to keep scrolling into the page then forgetting where you were.  Peopel will simply get fed up if they can’t access what they want immediately and the chances are that they will give up and visit your competitors site who do have a mobile website in place.

Once you have a mobile website, you need to optimise it in the same way that you would a normal website, this way you can make sure that you are appearing high up in the search results.

Find out about our Mobile Website packages

Having a good looking website is great, we all want that.  But more importantly most of us want a website that will turn visitors into our future customers.  In the same way a retail shop is laid out to encourage people to spend the most amount of money, a website needs to do the same.  We talk a lot about how to increase traffic to your website, but there is no point having lots of traffic which doesn’t actually do the things that you want them to do, whether that is picking up the phone, emailing, buying a product etc..

You need to encourange your visitors to make a positive buying decision and they will only do this if they have a good experience when using your website.  To do this you need to ensure that your website is laid out in a certain way, one which web users are familiar with and one that helps them to navigate around the site and find information easily.  If you make things too difficult for people, they will simply spend their money with someone else.

Things to consider:

• Why are people visiting your website
• Does your website design tell people what you do instantly
• What do you want them to do
• How easy is it to get from one page to another
• Is there enough information about your products and services
• Do you use different media such as images and video
• Where are your call to actions
• Where on the page is the content place

So you see, it’s really not all about having a good looking website design, it’s a lot more complicated than that.  Find out more about website design