Here’s what People Hate Most about your Website

If you’ve ever wondered why your website is still ranked at the lower half of the search results pages (and way below the positions of your competitors’ sites), you could point to one culprit: people simply don’t like it and what’s contained in it. Here are a few reasons.

How it works on mobile – People don’t have time to face their PCs anymore, so they turn to their phones—but what they experience on sites like yours are extremely long loading times, coupled with poor responsiveness and visuals.

Web Design: The First Step in Online Marketing

The Internet’s presence can no longer be ignored by businesses; with hundreds of thousands of people across the world accessing the Web at any given time, it is currently one of the most popular forms of media. The Internet’s popularity and accessibility makes it perfect for businesses to tap its marketing potential by establishing official websites of their own, among others. Businesses, however, need to be very particular with the way their websites are constructed in order to attract visitors—and keep them interested.

How Web Design Can Affect Your Site’s SEO

Web designers sometimes get too creative and forget why they are creating a site. Some are probably under the impression that if they focus on optimisation, their creativity will be stifled. The truth is designers should work closely with SEO experts to create outstanding web design in the Sunshine Coast because too many bells and whistles could end up making a lot of noise and undermining the site’s optimisation.

Not-so-hot Flash

Inasmuch as Flash is interesting to watch, it doesn’t get indexed by search engines, thereby lowering the site’s ranking. Designers should use it sparingly, and not with important content and navigation. Search engine spiders also devalue java applets and non-textual content.

Smart Web Design Begins at UX Task Analysis

There is more to online marketing than business owners can possibly imagine. The process doesn’t end in creating a website that could well represent your business. In fact, there is a far better strategy for dominating a particular market niche: task analysis.

Task analysis is a process designed to create a concrete picture of what the user’s task is on your website. Unlike use cases, task analysis goes beyond describing how actors interact with a system and delves more deeply into forming a useful understanding of what the user expects to do. It also leads a marketing team to visit a brick-and-mortar company where they can observe how specific services similar to the company they will try to market are provided.

Be Ready to Make Changes in Web Design

Continuous refinement in algorithms used by popular search engines like Google have always called the concern of many businesses, as this means that they have to implement changes towards their overall Internet marketing strategies. The most common among revisions companies have to make on their online promotion efforts is the style or technique employed in web design.

Over the years, a number of web design trends came and went, like the creation of a separate mobile website, using web templates and flat website design, and employing big images and flash in letterbox format. At one point, all these web design elements dominated the Internet and have even web designers scrambling to outdo others in a particular style (as they still do today). However, web design principles continue to evolve along with the reinvention of the Internet as a place that facilitates efficient information exchanges.

While it cannot be expected or predicted when a particular web design concept will last or remain a favorite among designers and search engines, businesses must always be prepared to make the necessary changes. Being ready to adapt to new trends will be a useful attitude that can help companies bring their A-game when competing with their peers.

Key Principles of Great Web Design

Web design is evolving more into an art movement, as designers are continuously pushing the limits to create the best possible looking web page. Here are some of the key principles web designers have continuously refined and sharpened to get better results each time.  

Newbie Web Design Pitfalls to Avoid

Small businesses should always make it a point to make and build their own website so their target market can easily find them. However, even if you’ve hired a reputable web design company, don’t be in a rush to get your site on the Net before you have inspected it thoroughly, particularly for any of these potential problems:

Text Walls

A website, especially one for a business, should entice visitors and encourage clicks. Now, what would make you want to see more of a site you’re visiting, seeing a clean homepage with simple images and a few engaging words for content, or one with nothing but a wall of text that could make your eyes ache before you can even figure out what it’s about? Definitely it’s the former.

Complex Navigation

If you want your customers to keep coming back to your site to do business with you, then make sure that it won’t take them too long just to find the page or content that they’re looking for. Keep it simple and easy to navigate (put a search bar on top of your home page to make things even easier).

Needy Popups

There are two ways to do popup windows on your site: one that gives suggestions or further information to your visitors, and one that motivates them to perform actions like subscribe or post comments before they can continue. The latter will only serve to catch the ire of your clients.

The Value of a Good Website Design

One of the most common mistakes businesses make in their online marketing efforts is that they do not pay much attention to their website’s aesthetics and navigability. They concentrate on optimizing basic SEO tools, such as sitemap creation, title tag optimization, and link building. While these methods are essential in catching users’ attention, they are hardly capable of keeping visitors’ interest and converting that interest to sales.

The website must be appealing enough for visitors to stay longer, check out the content, and take advantage of the products and services being offered. Designing a website is much like designing a physical store—simply attracting onlookers or window-shoppers won’t do a business any good. The entire online marketing effort should translate to actual sales.

What is an ideal website design then? A website is like a magazine; it has to be loaded with useful information, yet those information must be understandable and strategically arranged on every page. The content of each page must not only come with good quality but must be arranged such that viewers will not get easily bored or overwhelmed.

A good navigation system is also crucial in any website. There must be easy-to-find buttons to help viewers coast along while browsing. Generally, the website must be user-friendly so that visitors will stay long enough to actually close a sale.

UI Cards Trend Towards the Future of Web Design

A fundamental shift towards a new interface paradigm is happening right now. Influenced by the continuous growth in market share of smartphones and tablets, compact, specialized, and mobile-optimized user interface is becoming the trend among known websites like Google, Twitter, Pinterest and many more. This UI is called Cards.

The card user interface is both a trend and, possibly, the absolute future of web design. Web re-architecture (away from pages and links) is making it possible to personalise experiences. These are built on a collection of individual pieces of content, capitalising on the elements of mobility, and capturing just enough time of users' interest to convey needed information and give satisfaction that will ensure future visits.

Web Design and the Digital Storefront

The internet continues to be accessible while on the go, with the constant advancement of smartphones and tablets. Thanks to this convenience, it has now become a habit for customers to look for and do research on the products or services they need before deciding on the purchase. This allows for a better use of time and money, as they find numerous options, and can, for the most part, complete transactions electronically.

Sunshine Coast Web Design: Smart Design Begins at UX Task Analysis

At no point were available solutions or current technology discussed until they identified the desired outcome: a quick and effortless way to allow men to shop for flowers for women. By sticking to this ideal, Proflowers outpaced its competition, pulling the most profitable segment of the market out from under them.

The approach Marine shares in his article has important implications that apply to the process of contracting services for web design in Sunshine Coast. It reminds companies to focus on understanding customers’ needs first when having a website designed, rather than chasing after features that they don’t really need.

http://marketing.theproduct.com.au/industry-news/sunshine-coast-web-design-smart-design-begins-ux-task-analysis/

Why Web Design is Crucial in Online Marketing

The foremost rule in marketing is that it’s the job of a marketer to make a product or service desirable to, even needed by, the consumer. Appeal is a powerful motivator in sales, and businesses should always make it a point to entice their customers through one way or another. While there are many ways to market goods or services, it can be difficult to attract consumers through online marketing.

Responsive Web Design in the Sunshine Coast: A Must-Have for 2014

Trends come and go every year in the world of marketing, and this year, businesses might want to consider a whole range of interesting web design elements if they wish to stay up to date. According to Tech News Plus, one of these elements is called “responsive web design”, in which a webpage optimizes its layout and size based on how the user manipulates the web browser window. In contrast, text and images in the past ended up looking cluttered whenever the user reduced or increased the browser window size.

Sunshine Coast website design companies like Marketing theProduct can address these needs not only for the sake of generating interest, but also for the express purpose of improving a website’s search engine ranking and visibility—factors that influence how effectively a website can attract visitors. Incorporating the above design elements should give any website an added boost over the competition in 2014.

http://marketing.theproduct.com.au/industry-news/responsive-web-design-sunshine-coast-must-2014/

Why Responsive Web Design is Important

The landscape is changing for the world of the Internet. Since the World Wide Web first came into being, there has never been such a time as this where access to the Internet is possible from so many devices. Where Internet access used to be confined to the domain of the personal computer, a multitude of devices are now able to pull websites, pages, pictures, video, and other media from the interwoven network that is the web we know today.

On Site, In Sight: On Creating Proper Web Design in the Sunshine Coast

Young and tech-savvy employees can indeed bring something fresh and exciting to the table. Yet while the cost-saving prospects may prove attractive, businesses need to be more serious about constructing a compelling website and should be willing to invest in professional web design in the Sunshine Coast. A trusted company like Marketing theProduct can help businesses command a strong online presence through the kind of web design that delivers great visuals and a great site navigation experience with search engine optimisation and other online marketing techniques.

The layout, content, and overall design of a website shouldn’t be left in the hands of a raw recruit if a business hopes to attract more customers online. Instead, one should do the smart thing and enlist a Sunshine Coast web design expert for optimum results.

http://marketing.theproduct.com.au/industry-news/site-sight-creating-proper-web-design-sunshine-coast/

Comic Sans Use in Web Design

Comic Sans is in the heart of a “hate campaign” aimed at erasing this font type from existence. Even the underlying hate was turned into a joke by image macros. The objection to Comic Sans largely stems from its inappropriateness in websites and other publications that are intended to convey professionalism.

Hate or no hate, the font is still available with font packages for Microsoft and MacOS operating systems, and sees widespread use in signs and video productions, particularly those made using Windows’ built-in Movie Maker. Unfortunately, you won’t see this font type much in web designs as not too many designers have a love for it.

Hate campaigns notwithstanding, Comic Sans is still categorized as a web-safe font. However, the font only works for Microsoft and MacOS platforms and not so much on Unix platforms. More suitable fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier are known to work on all platforms. This, perhaps, contributes further to the unpopularity of Comic Sans.

The “web-safety” of a font is affected by its compatibility with various platforms. A font used in one system that isn’t compatible with another can create web design issues since the latter will automatically switch to a working font in its database. As Comic Sans is a bit larger than other fonts, the arrangement of the text can get messed up. For this reason, designers prefer fonts with universal compatibility.