Web Design - Engineer Your Business

October 1, 2008 at 11:07 pm · Filed under Web_Design

When it comes to web design for your business website, what picture do you conjure up in your mind? Talented artistic people working hard to create a visual masterpiece, using sophisticated graphic design software? Well, you’re not entirely wrong, only about 99% off.

Most people think of “web design” as almost a synonym for “graphic design”. This is really a very unfortunate association, mainly because it lowers your expectations, and grossly understates what you should expect from your business website. Now consider the expression “structural design”. Conjures up a completely different perspective, doesn’t it? The fact of the matter is that you need a structural designer for your online business presence far more than you need a pretty face for it, in the same way that you need an architect and structural engineer to design your business office, and a business manager to build your business, far more than you need a painter to make it look good, or an advertising business to help create a positive public perception.

Every aspect of your business is important in some way or other, it’s just that some aspects are more important. The problem of course is that you would never build your business premises from cardboard and then just paint it nicely so that it looks great from the front. Of course, the first customer that walked in would balk at the lack of depth of your business, and walk very quickly back out again.

It is exactly the same when building your online business presence. Absolutely, your business website should look great. After all, if it is not attractive and professional, people are going to be just as wary of dealing with you. That said, your website needs robust and solid structural design if you want potential customers to come in, look around, pick up and test your merchandise, have a cup of coffee, chat to your salesman, and make an informed and satisfactory purchase.

The days of an online brochure with a nice contact form and slick design doing the job for you are long gone. For someone to buy your business, they want to query your product database for the perfect product option. They want to search your store for relevant advice and product information, chat to other people in the market and interact with you as the business proprietor. If opening the door makes your business premises fall down, that’s as far as anybody will get.

So what does that mean when selecting a “web designer“? Simply, it means don’t look at how pretty their work is as 100% of your decision criteria — you are not looking for a graphic designer. These are some of the things a “web structural designer” should be able to bring to an effective online business:

* A solid foundation — your business website should at a minimum include an easy-to-use content management system and database.

* User registration and management facilities — if you don’t know who your customers are, you cannot communicate regularly with them

* Product database — this is your storeroom, without which you simply have nice pictures on a cardboard cutout as your product display.

* E-commerce capabilities — your customers should be able to buy from you online as easily as they can offline, otherwise they may as well visit a store close to them.

* Customer communication tools — newsletter functionality, online surveys and feedback forms are all effective and important ways of making the one-way internet medium into a two-way communication environment.

* Automated online promotion capabilities — this is a newer feature that most probably would not think of. The tasks associated with submitting your pages to search engines, optimizing your urls to be search-engine friendly, and many other SEO tweaks are increasingly time-consuming aspects of keeping business websites up to date. Many of these tasks, such as Google Sitemaps submission, url creation based on the title and content of the page, and relevant meta tag generation, to name a few, can all be automated into the design of your website’s core programming. Including them up front will save you countless hours and money trying to accomplish these tasks manually.

At the end of the day, your business website should look good. Much more importantly, it should be the most structurally sound and efficient aspect of your business if you make full use of it’s potential. Make sure your designer is coming from a systems engineering and programming design perspective, not just a graphic design paradigm, and you’ll have a business website that not only looks good, but also works tirelessly as hard as you do.

David Malan is an internet and e-commerce expert with over ten years experience in designing and developing enterprise grade online solutions for business.

He owns and runs RealmSurfer Consulting, based in Perth, Western Australia.

Website: Web Design Perth
About: About RealmSurfer Web Design Perth

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Using a Web Designer Instead of Doing it Yourself

August 5, 2008 at 4:07 am · Filed under Web_Design

I built my first website approximately five years ago and since then, I have always designed and built my own sites. This process has served me very well and over the years, my web building skills have advanced considerably (mostly through trial and error!). I have always recommended to my customers and subscribers that they too learn how to build their own sites and this is for two reasons:

1. It means that you know exactly what is going on with your site and how it actually ‘works’. As you have built it piece by piece, you know, quite literally, every aspect of it.

2. Doing the work yourself will save you a small fortune on web design costs.

During the past couple of weeks though, I have done something that I would have previously not even considered doing - I have started to talk to a professional web designer with a view to hiring him to build a new business website for me!!!

Why I hear you ask?

Well the answer is simple - because he can do a much better job of it than I can AND he will take on all of the stress that the project would have caused me.

I have an idea for a new online business (totally unrelated to Internet marketing/eBay or any of the other areas that I currently work in) and it needs a professional site with quite a bit of ‘behind the scenes’ functionality. There is nothing like it around at present which means that the functions I require are fairly unique to this project. I have spent some time talking to different programmers that I know around the World to see if they can pool their expertise and write different bits of the software required and link everything up through the website that I build but it was just getting too fiddly.

I was at the point where I was ready to toss the whole project out of the window when I took a step back and looked at things from a completely different angle. What I really needed was one person (or team) to take on the entire project and simply provide me with the new website based on the brief I supply them with.

So that’s exactly what I have done. I have a rough idea of what the site will cost and admittedly, it isn’t going to be the few hundred dollars that it would have cost me BUT the end result should be far more professional and will be produced to my exact specification. Most importantly though, it takes away all the sleepless nights that I would have experienced as I went through the process of trying to get everything to work together.

With this in mind therefore, I would like to amend the advice that I have been giving out for the past few years……

Learn how to design and build your own business websites BUT when you have learned how to do this, DO consider hiring professionals and outsourcing some of this work as and where possible

Copyright 2006 Richard Grady

Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since 1998. eBay sellers find wholesalers for free at: http://www.wholesale118.co.uk (UK) & http://www.thewholesaletrader.com (US).

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Small Business Web Design - How to Make Your Business Appear Larger Than Life

July 26, 2008 at 6:04 pm · Filed under Web_Design

In a world where things are never quite what they appear to be, the internet has proven to be a very mysterious place. Large and powerful corporations like Microsoft, Apple, and Google are running the show, but their websites are surprisingly easy to imitate by any freelance artist for any teeny-tiny business owner. How is this, you ask? The web is an easy place to look larger than you really are. This is especially true for businesses around the globe. It is more simple than one might think to impersonate a company that has over 10,000 employees, even if you are a “mom and pop” shop based in the middle of nowhere-Kentucky.

For example, we have an aspiring musician. We take his or her website and make it completely stunning, along with a biography narrated in the second-person writing style. We take a few high-quality photographs of the musician, and add some embedded music, and flashy website affects. This web page automatically makes this musician seem like the up and coming celebrity, even though they’ve barely just begun their career out of their small home town. If you added a contact email address directed to the musician’s “agent”, (even if they don’t have one), it makes them seem like they are even a bit harder to attain for an act. The website radiates with brilliance, all directed at the musician. Such praise and hoopla over any one person is sure to make them seem larger than they really are, if you do your research.

If you know where you are going with your professional presence, you too, can have a website that makes your business, band, artistry, or venture seem larger than life. There are five essential steps to consider before even thinking of calling up a web designer or programmer to start your significant project.

1. Research Your Competition. - I cannot stress this enough. If you are a small online store selling designer handbags and purses, you will want to do your research on the big boys of the handbag and purse business. Not sure who they are? Take a look at Google and Yahoo, and you’ll know right away who your competition is. Size them up, because this is where you want to be ten steps ahead of! Take notes for your web designer or development team.

2. Perfect Your Professional Image- If you don’t have a logo, or you don’t have one that you are happy with; now is the time to fine-tune every element of who your business is. Thinking along the lines of who your biggest competition is, decide the best direction of your professional presence. Remember, if you are going to play ball with the big boys, you must be prepared to think like them!

3. Don’t Look for the Cheapest Web Designer- Good Web Design isn’t the cheapest you can find. This will NOT help your professional image, and almost always leads to disappointment and wasted money. When it comes to professional web design, you really DO get what you pay for. Look for someone who has a unique and very intelligent outlook on the internet and what is hot in it today. Be ready and willing to spend a good amount of money to get the job done right the first time around.

4. Don’t be Intimidated- If you are look at your larger competitor’s websites and feeling the urge to cry or give-up, don’t do it! The reason most people start small businesses, is because they want to grow into larger and more prosperous entities down the line. Prepare yourself mentally, and get yourself into the mindset that you already own a large and efficient business that makes over a million dollars a year. This leads us into our final step.

5. Prepare for Growth- I have witnessed many small business owners who decide to revamp their websites to make themselves look larger and more cutting-edge. About 90% of the time, this leads to tremendous growth for their businesses. By looking larger, they essentially pave the way to actually becoming a larger business or venture. This is the most important step, because you must tie in the “What if” factors. Like, “What if we exceed our sales, will we have more product inventory readily accessible?” This step is so crucial to actually succeeding, and not just having a prettier website in vain.

Remember that actually succeeding is something that is solely up to the business owner. However, finding the right development team also is critical in this type of growth. There are also small things you can do to make your appearance seem larger. You can obtain a toll-free “800″ phone number, if you receive a large volume of calls. This usually indicates a large or quickly growing business. It is also wise to make sure that you own a “.com” domain name that indicates your business name somewhere in it. You should have an email address at this business domain such as, “sales@yourbusinessname.com” It is also wise to have a few email addresses that pertain to each issue, like sales, tech support, information, and any other relevant services that integrate into your business structure.

Terra Andersen is a veteran web designer and programmer who specializes in fresh and innovative ideas for up and coming businesses and ventures. She is the owner and lead designer/consultant at her firm, Digital Smash Media. http://www.digitalsmash1.com
A designer since the tender age of 13, she has seen the changes and evolution of the internet through the eyes of a child, a teen, and now as an adult.

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