Tag Archives: Web Design

Website Marketing To Your Niche and the General Public

In the past this blog has talked about the power of local website marketing, which helps promote your business to those customers nearby and thus most likely to benefit from what you have to offer. For many businesses, physical proximity is important, but it isn’t a deciding factor for every online store. If you don’t have a local focus, you’re probably deciding between a narrow focus on your existing client base, or a more broad, far-reaching website marketing strategy that will help bring in new clients while also catering to the needs and wants of your current base.

We typically help our clients find a balance of both, using web design that will reach both groups simultaneously and content arranged to ensure that each group can find what it wants.

Separate Web Pages Make For Great Website Marketing

When you are dealing with a number of different groups, creating different web pages is one of the most powerful tools you have. Search engine optimization allows you to specifically target website marketing at a particular group and ensure that you’ll be reaching them, rather than simply creating something that will be seen by everyone who Googles you. Knowing your potential markets is a necessary first step to making this strategy successful. You must be able to correctly identify keywords that each will target, and know how to tailor your website marketing and content appropriately for each.

Consistent Web Design Is A Benefit

Although your website marketing and content may change between the various micro-sites you set up, keeping your web design consistent can be a good idea. A consistent web design helps emphasize your company’s branding, especially because your design probably features your logo in a prominent location. Branding like this will help you be easily identifiable for any visitor, regardless of whether they’re a new customer or someone who’s worked with you before.

Connecting Your Micro Sites

The micro sites themselves need not have any connection to each other. Much like location based landing pages, these are designed to augment a strong, centralized website marketing plan with specific information relevant to a particular group. Your main homepage should have information that everyone will want to know; these subpages should emphasize the particular aspects of your products or services that people searching for these key terms would want to know. For example, if you manufacture office paper, you might have one page targeted at large businesses who will order in massive bulk, while another is targeted at small businesses requiring slightly less volume.

Avoid Being Too Niche

No matter what kind of website marketing strategy you choose, it is almost always wise to avoid catering exclusively to people in your niche market. Always make sure that you have ample information available on your website for people who may not understand what it is you have to offer. This extra content will help your website marketing overall so long as it’s properly optimized, and should fit in easily with your web design.

If your company would like help creating a web design and website marketing plan that will appeal to current customers and new business as well, Upton Technology Group can help. We can seamlessly unite the two, creating a strong web presentation for multiple audiences.

Going Beyond Website Marketing

It’s easy for most companies to see how web design and pure website marketing are important parts of the overall online marketing scheme. However, although they are important, they are not so important that other things should be overlooked. We’ll talk about some of the other options beyond website marketing, including social media, blogs, and more.

Web Design Is Just The Beginning

Everything flows from a good web design. With a strong web design, your customers will know exactly who you are whenever they encounter your company or products. The primary role of website marketing is to promote your company to everyone who sees it. Ensuring that the promotion is memorable is a key to having high impact. Whatever else you decide to do, be it social marketing, blogs, pay per click, or anything else, starting with good web design is always a good idea.

Social Media Adds A Lot Of Traffic

Social media is one of the newest and fastest developing website marketing tools online. Social media allows you to directly communicate with your fans or customers, while simultaneously offering you the chance to have anything you post go viral. Going viral means that it will be naturally passed along by the people that read your original. Viral is one of the best things that can happen for a company because it offers essentially free publicity. While it is possible for something not inherently viral to become viral through being put on the internet by the people who want to share, it’s a better idea to start it out on the internet yourself. This can be done either through Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (in some cases) or YouTube. All of these and more are strong places to start promoting a company through social media.

Pay Per Click Ads

If your company doesn’t want to wait for search engine optimization to reach its full potential, pay per click ads are a great addition to your website marketing. They are relatively inexpensive and can often be paid on demand, ensuring that you never overspend your budget. In addition, they will attract attention alongside the regular search results for your chosen terms. The end result is similar to search engine optimization, although the two are distinct.

Properly Using Blogs

Blogs can be a great way to reach your visitors in a format that’s slightly less formal than an open letter from the CEO or a simple website page. Posting a blog allows you to provide constant updated content, which is always a plus for the search engines. In addition, it’s a good way to add something new each week and keep your visitors interested.

All of these elements can – and should – work in harmony with your web design and website marketing. When used together, they will always become stronger as one naturally permits more linking to the other, and vice versa. Creating a comprehensive plan from the beginning is wise, and simply planning different stages will help keep costs down. Upton Technology Group can help you determine all the specifics of your website marketing, including web design, web development, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and more.

Integrated Website Marketing: Are You On Board With This Strategy Yet?

As website marketing professionals, we at Upton Technology Group are always looking to help our clients get the most out of their marketing efforts. We see many companies who are successful in one aspect of website marketing, such as search engine optimization or web design, but who fall short in another important way. Today’s market doesn’t permit anything other than strong marketing on all fronts; that’s what makes integrated marketing so important. With integrated website marketing, you create a unified message across diversified marketing tools. Your web design fits in neatly with your search engine optimization, which in turn is backed by strong offline marketing. When you combine all of these, you obtain much more marketing power than would be available through one avenue.

Good Search Engine Optimization Is Inherently Integrated

No company can afford to skip over search engine optimization in today’s highly competitive environment. As more potential customers turn to search to guide their product choices, it’s pretty much imperative that your company come out on top. Search engine optimization starts with your company’s own homepage and your own web content. Web design is a natural part of it.

But that’s not all there is to search engine optimization. To be done right, search engine optimization will also incorporate things like link building, which is best done through content marketing. Content marketing involves putting your company’s name out there by publishing articles. Those articles will create valuable backlinks and help your website rank more highly, but they’ll also establish you as a thought leader and industry leader within your field. You become an authority on the topic, and at the same time you make your search engine optimization more effective. It’s a win-win situation.

Good Web Design Ties In With Your Other Marketing Endeavors

Web design is itself a combination of many other factors. For instance, web design implies some form of logo design. It also requires some degree of web development to meet technical challenges, such as the creation of an online ordering system, or simply the organization of your website to ensure that it can be easily navigated. While not all of these are marketing related, all of them are interconnected and impact the final product.

Web design is the background that highlights all other elements of your website. When done well, web design ties your website together with your other marketing in subtle ways that might not even be obvious to your visitors. It is things like color and logo design that will make that connection, and that will solidify your company’s identity in the process.

Offline Marketing Is A Crucial Part Of An Integrated Strategy

There’s a strong tendency for today’s marketing experts to unintentionally ignore the offline in favor of an online focus. While the world’s eyes are increasingly shifting toward the internet, there are still many instances where offline marketing can reach them just as effectively. The key is targeting your offline efforts to ensure that they have maximum impact. They should coordinate with your search engine optimization and content marketing. When you put all of these disparate elements together, you get a powerful and effective campaign where every element supports and enhances the others.

Upton Technology Group continues to lead the way with integrated website marketing locally and nationwide. If you’d like to learn more about integrated website marketing or any of its component strategies, we’d be happy to work with you and create a custom plan for your business.

How To Prepare For Your Web Design / SEO Strategy Meeting

Starting out with search engine optimization can be a daunting task, even if you have good guidance. One of the best ways to help your search engine marketing company create the best plan for you is to spend a bit of time preparing before you have your first web design discussion. Upton Technology Group encourages everyone that we work with to take these steps before our first meeting to ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness of our planning.

Questions To Think About

The first thing to consider is what you want out of the search engine optimization strategy. Generally, we see two main goals: either general company awareness, or pushing of a specific product. While the general strategy for search engine marketing remains similar between the two, there are important differences, which make determining which one you want to focus on a rather crucial decision.

In addition, you’ll need to decide how much you want to invest in your web design, and then how much you want to invest in search engine marketing. There are many different types of plans which can be created and tweaked depending on your budget. Although determining the exact cost of each ahead of time can be infeasible, deciding whether you want to work on a shoestring, a moderate budget, or a maximum campaign is an important choice.

Deciding What Questions To Ask

It’s just as important to know what you want to ask the search engine marketing experts. We always want you to ask questions – it helps ensure that the solutions we create are achieving your goals. Depending on your own knowledge of search engine optimization, your questions may be very basic or very complex. Don’t hesitate to ask anything; there is a lot of misinformation on the internet about search engine marketing, and we’re happy to set the record straight.

Come Prepared With Your Current Marketing Materials

Deciding what type of web design and marketing will serve you best is much easier if we have a thorough understanding of what you’re currently doing. Bring any samples that you have from current initiatives, including clips of video spots. Everything you bring will help provide a better sense of what you’re looking for out of search engine optimization. In addition, it will help determine what (if anything) you want to keep from the themes of your previous campaigns. If you’ve developed a particularly recognizable logo, that may be worth keeping. Of course, you may also want a complete change – it depends on your situation.

Make Notes Of Any Major Search Engine Marketing Initiatives From The Past

The final step to prepare you for your first strategy session is to bring information about any kind of search engine optimization or search engine marketing that you’ve done in the past. Whether it was minor and ineffective or had a great impact doesn’t matter. Knowing what’s been done recently will help with planning for the future. Having this history be as complete as possible is helpful, but not required. Just collect what information you can.

Having all of these facts gathered together will help your first search engine marketing strategy session proceed much more smoothly. You’ll have to answer these questions and gather the data eventually; collecting it before your first web design meeting will simply speed up the timeline and speed up the results.

Is Your Website Designed For Maximum Search Engine Optimization Success?

Although content is the single most important element of search engine optimization, many search engine marketing companies overlook an important element: the actual web design of your company’s online presence. There are many technical adjustments which must be made in order for any web design to maximize availability to search engines. In addition, there are visual tweaks which can help appeal to the new audience that your search engine optimization brings. Being aware of these and implementing them on your website will be a major help to your search engine marketing strategy.

Web Design Could Be Hiding Your Webpage From Search Engines

Unless your website was created by a company that knows the rules of search engine optimization, you could have elements within the code of your website that makes it hide from search engines. Google, Yahoo!, and Bing all allow developers to temporarily opt out of having their web design projects listed in search engines by having them marked as noindex or nofollow. That simply means that the search engines won’t index that page, and won’t count links from that page in their ranking calculations.

The first thing you should do before starting a search engine marketing campaign is make sure that none of these markers have been placed in the code for your website. You want the search engines to be finding your page and indexing it for their rankings. Otherwise, your search engine optimization efforts won’t be successful. Most web design companies will have at least some knowledge of search engine optimization techniques, but it’s always wise to check for the presence of these tags before starting your search engine marketing.

Creating A Web Page With The Right Appeal

Your web design is the backdrop for your search engine optimization. The words are what really tell the story and drive the sale, but the strongest search engine marketing goes beyond just text. It includes a full examination of current web design to determine whether or not you want to make changes. Successful search engine optimization will draw in a totally new group of visitors. They are less likely to know your company, and less likely to be specialists in your product field. An overly specialized or niche web design may counteract the effects of your search engine optimization strategy by driving them away.

When we suggest search engine marketing packages, we always try to include some form of web design evaluation. The best search engine marketing web design will include a detailed look at your industry, especially if you’re looking to break into a new market or a new market segment. Understanding the details of the new market and creating a web design based on that will help you ensure that you make the most of the new traffic generated by your search engine optimization.   

Whether you’re looking to add search engine marketing to an already existing web design, or want to start from scratch, Upton Technology Group can help you make the most of your online presence. We will ensure that every element of your web design is search engine optimization friendly, and that you’re using the right search engine marketing techniques to really drive traffic.

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines: Understanding The Search Engine’s Suggestions (And Requirements) For Website Marketing

There are many different search engines that should be considered when judging search engine optimization results. Although Bing and Yahoo! have substantial traffic and do offer some search engine marketing benefits of their own, the vast majority of all searchers are using Google. Google has also taken the most active role in improving their search engine and taking a lead on website marketing, which is why most search engine optimization professionals look to Google before looking anywhere else.

To help search engine marketing professionals and amateur webmasters alike understand what Google’s engine is all about, they publish and maintain the Google Webmaster Guidelines, which provide advice about website marketing and outline the offenses that Google considers abuse of the system and punishes severely. Everyone with a website should read these guidelines for themselves, but in the meantime this rundown of the most salient points will help you get started on website marketing.

Google Rewards Good Web Design

When Google’s search engine crawls your site, it sees more than just the website marketing that you’ve put there. It doesn’t see the finished product and can’t judge your website marketing design based on aesthetics. Instead, it sees a text-only version of the site, including links to other pages and all your content. Google’s crawlers want to see that your page is clearly organized, with a sitemap and logical flow between pages. For best search engine optimization results, don’t overload pages with links, and ensure that every page has at least one link pointing to it.

Search Engine Marketing Friendly Code Is A Must

There are many ways that code can harm your search engine marketing efforts despite being perfectly good design practice. For example, if you rely on images, make sure they’re accompanied by the proper “ALT” attribute description so you’re not losing out on any search engine optimization value from that picture.

Similarly, make sure that any content management system you use is website marketing friendly. Many of them may create URLs that include a ? at some point, the sign of a dynamic page. Some crawlers won’t look at dynamic pages, so you’re better off avoiding them if possible. There are many other little things that make code search engine optimization friendly, but they are quite technical. Make sure that you have your design company structure everything for search engine marketing from the beginning.

Search Engine Optimization Shouldn’t Be The Focus Of Your Content

Google’s website marketing guidelines say very little about how to choose keywords or how to successfully execute search engine optimization. Instead, they urge webmasters to focus on search engine marketing by creating content that will appeal to people who would want to visit your website. As for keywords, Google simply advises webmasters to think of keywords that people might search for to find your business, and ensure that they appear on the site. There is no emphasis on keyword density, although that has long been a proven element of search engine optimization.

The Website Marketing Quality Guidelines

These guidelines might seem like suggestions, but if your website marketing violates them you’re quite likely to get punished by Google. The main violations involve participating in certain black hat search engine optimization strategies, where a company gets ahead in website marketing by doing things that really don’t add value for searchers. These are things like link farming, including hidden text or links that only search engines will see, and in particular anything that involves duplicate content. Duplicate content is arguably the best way to completely sink any search engine marketing effort, but it’s also easy to avoid: just don’t put the same content up twice.

There are many specific guidelines offered by Google, but these basics are enough to help business owners understand what search engine marketing consultants are doing to help boost rankings. We recommend that everyone read the guidelines for themselves (they aren’t long at all) to gain a thorough understanding of what really drives successful search engine optimization and website marketing, at least through Google.

Good Website Content: Creating An FAQ Page That’s “Just Right”

Even Goldilocks knows that too much of a good thing isn’t always good. If you’re creating an FAQ page for your company’s website, you’ll need to find the balance between questions and answers that are too short to be helpful and so long they bore people to death. Knowing when your FAQ website content is “just right” can be tricky, but keeping our tips in mind will help.

There are three good reasons every website design should include an FAQ page for visitors:

1. It gives you the opportunity to answer common questions for site visitors. If you can answer most of their questions, they are more likely to contact you when they are ready to buy.
2. FAQ pages can free up your Customer Support team for more complex issues. If your support team spends most of the day answering the same, simple questions, an FAQ page can help free up their time for more complex issues and handling customer orders.
3. It’s another opportunity for you to make a good impression by helping potential customers even before they place their first order or set up their first appointment.

Crafting FAQ Answers For Good Website Design

An FAQ page should be all about answering valid questions, not about marketing. It’s tempting to sprinkle in some great selling points, but don’t. You can market all you want on other pages, but the website content on an FAQ page should focus solely on helping potential customers.

Keep your FAQs short and to the point. Rambling on for several paragraphs isn’t necessary to answer most questions. If you turn the answer into a sales pitch, you’ll only annoy your readers. If a question requires a yes or no answer, respond immediately, then elaborate in a sentence or two if needed. You can include a link to a page with more information if necessary, but don’t make the answer all about selling something. Successful website design sometimes takes a “less is more” approach.

For instance, if the question is, “Can I use my current tripod with your new CX17 camera?” don’t go into a long explanation about why the customer should always buy a new tripod for each camera.  The first word in your answer should either be “Yes,” or “No.” If the answer is “No,” an explanation may be in order, but keep it simple, such as “No. Older model tripods don’t have the correct safety lock feature to ensure a secure fit. If you would like to learn more about tripods that fit your CX17, please visit our accessories page.” You’ve directed them to helpful website content on another page without blatantly trying to sell.

Organizing Your FAQ Website Design

Ideally, you should be able to answer each question in one short paragraph of two to four sentences. Any longer than that, and your readers may just give up and call your customer service number out of frustration. If a question is complex, consider breaking it into parts so that readers can easily understand the step by step process.

You may want to include sub categories in your website content if you have more than ten FAQs. For instance, you could have sections titled “Technical Questions,”  “Product Questions,” or “Warranty Questions.” This makes it easier for readers to quickly find the question they’re looking for without having to scroll down a long page of unrelated information.

Be sure your FAQ page is easy to find and navigate. Your website design should include a tab on your home page and several other pages that will link directly to your FAQ website content. Having to search for answers can be frustrating and is poor website design; keep things simple so that potential customers will actually use your FAQs instead of calling customer support with the same questions.

Finally, determine what website content should be included in your FAQs. You can try tracking customer support questions for at least a month to get an idea of what customers are asking. If your support team is answering the same twelve questions daily, then you have twelve FAQ questions that should be included in your website design. Also review any incoming emails from customers to see what kinds of questions they are asking and determine if these need to be covered on your FAQ page as well.

If your FAQ website content is clearly organized with clear, concise answers, potential customers will see your company as helpful and professional. It’s one step closer to closing a great deal without having to “sell” anything!

Website Design: Choosing A Powerful Color Scheme

A winning website design will increase interest in what your company has to offer because it conveys a compelling message about who you are and what your company stands for. In many cases, businesses put a lot of thought and effort into two aspects of their website – the content and the web design – while neglecting color considerations. Sadly, this can lead to some beautifully designed websites that end up disappointing because something “isn’t quite right.” 

Color Affects Emotions And Perceptions

Colors elicit powerful emotional responses and can change your perception without you even being aware of it. A cheerful, brightly colored website design might convey a sense of fun and childlike enthusiasm, while a website done in neutrals such as black and grey will seem more mature and elegant. Understanding the psychological meaning of colors will help you avoid unfortunate color choices in your website design. Below are some of the most common colors used in website designs and their most common associations:

Red – Power, passion and action. This is a strong color that can also mean danger
Pink – Delicacy, femininity, romance.
Yellow and Orange – These are vibrant, healthy, friendly colors that are seen as informal and welcoming
Green – Green is one of the most popular colors in website design because it has so many positive associations, including good health, nature, growth and money.
Blue – This is one of the most versatile colors for website designs. In deep shades like navy it denotes power and tradition (think IBM and law firms), while softer, lighter shades can be very refreshing and uplifting. Blue is also associated with the sky and horizons.
Purple – Website designs featuring purple are seen as powerful, mysterious and regal. Purple is also the color of creativity and spirituality.
Brown – There is no other color that conjures up warmth and home like brown. It’s a cozy, reassuring color that encourages trust.

Working Within Color Limitations

If you already have an established company logo or color scheme, you may think you’re limited to using those colors exclusively, but there are ways to incorporate a different set of colors if you want to change things up a bit. If your logo is in bright, warm colors like yellow and red but you’d like your website to convey trustworthiness, security and tradition, use a background color such as navy.

If you’re just starting on your web design for the first time, you should take the time to thoroughly research the colors you’re considering incorporating into your new logo. It’s a great opportunity to create a seamless website design that uses color to its full potential.

Popular Color Schemes For Web Designs

Choosing too many colors for your web design is just as dangerous as choosing too few colors. If you have too many different colors, your website will look overcrowded, busy and incoherent. Too few colors can lead to a flat looking, boring website. You can achieve balance by sticking with some tried and true color schemes.

Monochromatic Color Schemes use one color as the focal point, with varying intensities of the color used as accents. These are harmonious, peaceful schemes that evoke unity.

Analogous Color Schemes use two or more colors that are close to each other on the color wheel, such as blue and green or yellow and orange.  For added impact, one of the colors is usually chosen as the dominant shade for website designs. For instance, yellow might be the focal color with accents of red and orange.

Contrasting Color Schemes use two main colors that are opposite each other on a color wheel, with one warm color and one cool color. You might choose blue and orange or go with deeper shades such as burgundy and green. Website designs using contrasting color schemes are often seen as strong and secure.

Triad Color Schemes incorporate three distinct colors into a web design. The colors will be equidistant from each other on a color wheel, such as purple, orange and green. These color schemes can be overwhelming unless you tone down the intensity of at least one of the shades. For instance, you could use lilac or peach to represent purple or orange.

Colors are powerful tools that can create just the right mood for your company’s website design. Taking the time now to choose the perfect website color scheme before you commit to a final design will benefit you and your company in the long run. Fortunately, Upton Technology can help you create an original color scheme that accurately reflects your company’s image.

Usability: Is Your Website Design User Friendly?

An awesome website has to do more than just look pretty. It also has to have more going for it than great content or savvy website marketing. Many beautifully designed websites tank on the Internet because they simply aren’t user friendly. For your new website design to truly be successful, it has to be easy to use. If visitors go to your site and see a gorgeous layout but can’t figure out how to get to the next page of information or they can’t quickly search and find what they’re looking for, they’ll leave. Don’t let your website design be the one they’re referring to when they say, “The website design looked great, but getting around the site was torture.”

Keeping Your Website Design Focused

If you’re doing plenty of website marketing but still aren’t seeing many repeat customers to your site, take another look at the design. Don’t try to be too many things at once. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. And do NOT cram all the information about your product or service onto one page. Internet users tend to scan rather than read, and too many details can drive potential customers away. People want to be able to learn something by glancing at your website design rather than scrolling through endless text.

Use short, concise descriptions and plenty of headings and subheadings to break up the information into easily digested bytes of information. You don’t have to go into a great deal of detail on your home page; you can provide more information on other pages. Simply leave a nice little trail of bread crumbs that lead from the initial page to additional pages and make sure those bread crumbs are easy to find.

Never Skip The Search Box

You may think you know what site visitors are looking for in your website design, but there’s always room for surprises. Be sure you include a prominently placed search box on most, if not all, of your pages. Some people won’t even bother to check out your navigation tabs; they’ll go straight for the search box and type in a word or phrase in order to go directly to the page or pages that have the information they are seeking.

Use A Logical Website Design

The flow of information on your site should be intuitive. Don’t show a navigation bar that takes you to some other pages while neglecting others. If you have a full page for one product, have complete pages for other products, otherwise visitors may become frustrated or confused when they can’t find the specific product page they’re looking for. Cross linking your pages is best for website design, but only if you’re willing to link all of your pages to the various other pages that make sense. If you don’t cross link, visitors will have to return to the home page each time they want to navigate to a new page; this can grow old quickly, so spending some time to cross link will have definite benefits. Your website marketing will benefit as well; you’ll have additional pages to link to from outside sources.

When you use tabs in your website design, don’t get too creative or use too many words. Remember, people should be able to glance at the tabs and immediately know what each additional page is about. Using common phrases such as “About Us” and “FAQs” are reassuring and easy to understand.

Include A Sitemap In Your Web Design

Even the best website design may leave some visitors confused, so be sure and include a site map that is accessible. In some cases, it may be the easiest way for an individual to navigate your website design. It will also give visitors a “bird’s eye view” of your website and may encourage them to visit other pages they hadn’t thought about.

If your website design features intuitive links from page to page as well as an easy to navigate plan, your website marketing will be more successful and you should see an increase in customer satisfaction and response.

Website Design: Communicating Clearly With Your Website Designer

Hiring a website designer to create a new or updated version of your website – or create a completely new site for your growing business is a serious undertaking. If you want your website to truly reflect your company vision and draw in new customers, you’ll need to communicate effectively with your designers in order to keep them on track and protect your investment. Remember that working with a website designer is a two way street; you’ll need to put in some time and effort from your end rather than simply paying a designer and expecting them to create a website without any guidance. Website designers are professionals, not mind readers.

Communicate With Examples

You may already have a clear idea of how you want your website to look and feel, but your website designer doesn’t. Be sure to clearly explain the look and feel you want. Give examples that clearly illustrate what you’re looking for. When you show your website designer a website design you like, talk about why you like it and what features appeal to you. Specifics are important. Simply saying, “I want a website like this one” isn’t helpful. Saying “I love the way the products are displayed,” or, “The lettering and style of this site appeals to me,” can give your website designer a better sense of direction.

Remain Open Minded Regarding Website Design

Website designers are skilled in crafting websites that capture the essence of businesses and convey the message of their client companies. Although you probably already have an idea of what you want, keep an open mind. Website designers can give you helpful suggestions for ways to improve your website that you may not have considered. They know what works best and can give you valuable guidance and suggestions. Let them guide you, but don’t forget to ask questions and stay focused on the goals you have for your website. Consider new ideas that could improve your website.

Remain Available

Website design can’t move forward without your input. Simply hiring a website designer and giving the design team a list of what you want doesn’t work. Any schedule you agree to is based not only on how much the designer can accomplish, but on your feedback. If they send you five pages to review, don’t let it languish for weeks because you’re too busy.

If you don’t respond with suggestions, questions, and your approval or disapproval of those five pages, your website designer can’t move forward with any of your other pages. It would be a waste of time to continue working on additional pages if you may eventually respond to the first five with broad criticisms. The designers need to know if they are off track and need to take a different approach. Respond to phone calls and emails and be sure to answer any questions promptly.

Prioritize Your Website Design Goals

In most cases, a complete website isn’t designed all at once. If you want to have a cohesive website that continues to evolve, you may need to prioritize. Think about what the main pages should be and focus on them first. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Remember that you’ll need to invest both time and money in the process and focus on the most crucial pages first. Ask yourself what is most important, and what can wait. If you try to do too much at once, all aspects of the project can suffer.

Be Sure Both Parties Understand Your Expectations And Budget

If you’ve gotten quotes from several website designers, you should already have an idea of what your website design will cost. If you haven’t done this yet, be sure to get some quotes based on what you’re looking for. To avoid any unexpected problems with the budget, ask for a clear breakdown on what your budget will cover and how any changes in the scope of the project will be handled. Keep in mind that website design is an evolving process. If you want significant changes as the project moves forward, knowing what to expect will alleviate any misunderstandings.

Be realistic with your goals and budget. Wanting your website designer to deliver the moon and stars on a shoestring budget isn’t realistic and is unfair to the designer. He or she is a professional and is investing his knowledge and expertise in your company’s site and deserves to be compensated accordingly.

Above all, make sure that you and your website designer are on the same page. Frequent communication and clear direction from you will keep your website design moving forward and on track toward a finished product your company will love.