Top Rounded Section

How to plan out your website

Posted: January 20th, 2010

Like anything in business a website requires careful planning. This article will provide guidelines and tips for planning your web strategy. Not only will this help your web designer/developer when it comes to building your site, but it may even save you money too, as the site will be able to built quicker. Read on for more information.

The pen is mightier than the mouse

The first stage of planning your new website will involved sketching out a basic outline of the information you want to display on it. You should start with your top-level links (the main categories or pages for your site). You may find that certain categories/pages require sub-pages and categories. This will almost always be true if you’re planning on selling products online. For example, if your site is to sell pet food you will need to have separate categories of food for each animal that you sell the food for. Work your way through each of the sections for your site deciding whether you need additional pages for each. If you do list the sub-pages below the appropriate heading in your sketch.

Why is sketching out the page names important?
This first step is probably the most important step in the whole process of building your site. The number of pages you have can have an effect on the design of your site. If you have several sub-pages in each category for example, your designer may choose to build your site’s navigation system using a drop-down menu, something that wouldn’t work if you only had top-level pages (there wouldn’t be any sub-categories). The number of pages your site has can also affect the price of your project, or may influence the designer’s software solution for your project (it may be cheaper and quicker to use open-source software rather than building the site from scratch). The designer isn’t able to make these decisions without first know the approximate number of pages/sub-pages/categories you need in your website.

Branding your site

Quite often you’ll want to use the same logo and corporate colours on your website that you use on all of your other promotional material. This is a good idea. It maintains a consistent look across your range of offline and online material and also helps clients identify that the new website they’ve come across does indeed belong to the same company they’ve dealt with before in offline business. However, there are times when it may be necessary to creat entirely new branding. One example of this could be for a new product you’ve developed and are wanting to promote on it’s own self-contained website. Even if this is the case you should include your main company logo on the page somewhere, maybe in the bottom right-corner of the footer, so that people know your company has produced the product. Sites like this are often used for the promotion of iPhone Apps.

Whilst you’ll no doubt have your own vision of how your site should look you should always listen to the web designer. They’re the professionals in this aspect of creating your site and if they tell you something won’t work you should take note, especially where colours and page layout are concerned.

The web: it’s a social thing

As well as planning out the site itself you should also be making plans for how you will drive traffic to the site once it’s completed and thus grow your user base. You may have heard the term ’social networking’ a lot recently. Social networkings sites are websites that allow users to communicate and share ideas and information. They’re also excellent tools for marketing your company’s products and services to a large number of people for free. Twitter is currently one of the most popular social networking tools and you should certainly be investigating ways you can use their service to help spread the word about your site/service/products. This blog is set to automatically post new entries directly to Twitter as soon as they’re published. This is a great way for me to tell everyone that there’s something new for them to read.

You should be prepared to spend some time cultivating your social networking sites. It’s often a good idea to appoint someone within your organisation to regularly maintain and update content for you in this area. A lot of people think that once a website is live you can forget about it and it will start working for you. This couldn’t be further from the truth. You need to constantly keep your site up-to-date with products and information, you need to tell people about your site, you need to advertise your site. If you don’t then you’ve wasted the money and time you spent having it developed.

One final tip in this section, and it’s one I’ve seen people ignore time and time again. Make sure your website address is on all of your company’s printed literature. It’s a no brainer, but is absolutely essential.

Final thoughts

In summary then, you need to start your planning way before a single line of code is written for your new site. You need to reflect your company’s corporate branding on your site in most cases and you need to continue to develop and promote your site once it’s live on the Internet. Follow these rules and you should end up with a professional looking site that helps generate extra income for your business.

Written by Ian Hazeldine, Managing Director of Yellow Circle Web Solutions Limited, a web design and hosting company based in Staffordshire, UK

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Communication, Marketing, Web Design | 3 Comments »

Build trust with your clients – get more business

Posted: October 28th, 2009

building-trust-with-clients

This industry of web design and development that we all work in can often lead to clients and customers feeling confused, overwhelmed and daunted by the prospect of dealing with us on a day to day basis. Indeed, it may even put them off even calling us in the first place. If they don’t call, we don’t get new business and hence don’t make money. This is not a situation that you want to find yourself in. So how can we prevent this from happening? How can we earn a prospective new client’s trust before they’ve ever met us? This article aims to help answer that question – read on.

Starting a new relationship

In the beginning, when first meeting a client the initial rapport built up with them is going to influence their attitiude towards you throughout the entire project development cycle. It’s important right from the get-go that the client feels comfortable talking to you and is trusting of what you’re saying. We always arrange a face-to-face meeting at the client’s own premises when we are working with someone new. This is very important in laying the foundations of a good working relationship. Firstly the client is in an environment they’re familiar with, this immediately puts them at ease. Also, it’s far more convenient for them, they don’t have to take time away from their work to travel to meet you, so you’ve immediately given them a benefit before you’ve even met. We’ve often agreed to meet clients outside of normal office hours in the comfort of their own home. This has helped to start the working relationship off on a good footing.

Talking like people, not like IT Experts

Just because we web designers know what CSS, PHP and FTP mean doesn’t mean that our clients will. It’s vitally important to remember that your client doesn’t work in the industry that you do and (in most cases) may not have much techinical knowledge. Don’t baffle them with technical terms, talk to them like people, explain things in a way that they will understand and always ensure they do understand what you’re saying before you move on to something else. This seems to be something that a lot of technical people either forget or are not good at. We’ve heard time and time again from clients that they didn’t understand what the people they used to deal with for their website needs were telling them. Remember, you want the client to feel comfortable when speaking with you. If you overload them with technical jargon you will not achive this.

Constantly ask for feedback

At all stages during a web design project we ask the client for their feedback. The benefits offered by this are twofold. Firstly, it reinforces the building of trust for the client. They’re being asked for their opinion. It tells them that they have a say in what happens with the building of their website and that they’re not being steamrolled over by a bunch of technical guys. Also, having regular contact with the client is essential to keep the rapport that was built up during the face-to-face meeting(s) going. If a client is happy to talk to you and gets what they want for their website then it’s far more likely that they will do business with you again. Ignore them and only email them once asking for money when the website is finished and they may be left feeling with a product they don’t really like and a company they have no faith or trust of. That will not get you more business from them.

Get client testimonials and put them on your site

As basic as the paragraph headline above sounds you’d be amazed at the number of companies who forget to do this or simply haven’t thought of doing this. You’ve built a great website and you have an excellent working relationship with your new client. You need other prospective clients to see this. It’s vitally imporant that your website (in whatever industry you work in) has testomonials from clients on it.

If you’ve not done this yet, then now is the time to start. Client testimonials are a much better sales too than anything the slickest of sales people can come up with because they’re genuine thoughts and feelings of people who have used your services. For new clients this will immediately help them gain an overview of how you work and how easy you are to work with.

You may have a great design portfolio but simply displaying that on your website isn’t enough. People want to know that they’re going to get good service from you, that they’re going to be able to contact you if they need to and that they can ask you things without feeling like they’re asking something silly.  Testimonials give them the best insight into your company they can have without actually having work done by you.

Keep up-to-date

Again it may seem obvious, but not everyone does it. If you have client testimonials on your site (and if not why not?) you need to keep regularly updating them. If a new client visits your site and sees that all of your testimonials are from 10 years ago it will not present you in a great light.

Final thoughts

As we’ve discussed, building trust with your clients is vital to having a good working relationship with them and increasing the chances of them doing repeat business with you. So far we’ve had repeat business from almost all of our clients so we know the way we’ve detailed things in this article works. Next time you’re with a client think back to this article, it may help you secure the business you’re trying to get.

Written by Ian Hazeldine – Managing Director of Yellow Circle Web Solutions Limited based in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Customer Service | No Comments »

Think of your home page as your shop front window

Posted: October 14th, 2009

home-page-is-your-shop-window
This week we’re going to be concentrating on argueably the most important page in any website; the home page. Quite often when carrying out work for clients, especially site re-designs we’ll encounter a home page on their site that looks more like a word document than a web site. You should think of your home page as the virtual window to your store that can be used to entice customers (users) further in.

With this in mind we’ll explore some of the most common mistakes that we’ve found on client sites (before we’ve worked on them) and how you can change these for the better.

Too much text will kill you

Probably the most common mistake we encounter on client sites is that they simply have way too much text on their home page. Think about the content that you’re writing for your website, do you really need to put it all on the first page? Probably not. This is certainly not a good way to entice users to explore your site further. If you present a page that’s full of paragraphs and paragraphs of text your user will quickly navigate away from your site as they can’t immediately see anything to interest them. When a user first visits a website you only have their attention for a few seconds. If your site doesn’t grab their attention they will certainly be able to find one that does and this means you’ve lost them and hence lost any chance of them doing business with you.

Don’t waffle

Remember, a user wants to see what you can offer them. They are not interested in how proud you are about your business or how you feel about a product or service you provide. They’re interested in what’s in it for them. Keep your text relevant, concise and enticing. A simple introductory paragraph of 3 or 4 lines will usually suffice for your home page. If you lose track of this think of what you see in the high street when you’re out shopping. Shops put posters and offers in their shop windows, they don’t put paragraph after paragraph of text telling you how happy they are with their business and your website home page shouldn’t either.

Make your text relevant

Not only is relevant text important for keeping your user interested and wanting to read more, but it’s also good for gaining a high rank within popular search engines such as Google. The text on your home page should provide the user with a clear idea of what services or products you provide. Concentrate on your main area of business on the home page. If you diversify and offer other services or products to a lesser degree then by all means promote them on the site too, but ensure they don’t encroch too much on the home page. The main factor in gaining a high rank in google is good relevant content.

If you’re not too good at writing copy yourself it would be wise to seek assistance from someone to do it for you. If you know someone personally (a friend or family member) that can write content well ask them to help you out. If not then there are professional copy writers who can provide this service for you. Of course this will cost you money, but remember, this is your business we’re talking about. If you had a high street shop you wouldn’t let just anybody put things in your shop window. Your website should be no different.

State your unique selling points

Every business has a unique selling point of some sort. A short time ago we had a meeting with a client that wanted us to re-design their existing website. We took a look at their site and and were met with a home page that contained way too much text and absolutely no points of interest. We asked them what their unique selling points were and they replied “we don’t really have any.” This was not the case and with a little probing we found that they were a family run business that had been successfully trading for over 20 years, they had full approval from the industry bodies for the product they provided, they were the exclusive provider of  a range of products and they operated on a national basis. None of these points were on their website and all of them should have been.

Always ensure you think about what your business has to offer and how that can benefit your customers. If you have to be approved to operate in your line of work make sure you get the logo stating you’re approved onto your site home page. If you’re able to exclusively provide a product or service shout about it on your home page. But remember, don’t achieve that through paragraph after paragraph of text. Use graphics, or highlighted text to catch the user’s attention.

Use good quality images

Images can make or break a home page. It’s vitally important that you use good quality images that clearly illustrate what you’re trying to show to your customers. Taking your own pictures is fine as long as they look good. Again, if you’re not able to do it yourself ask friends and family to help you out. If you don’t know anyone personally that can do this then there are several good image library websites that have hundreds of thousands of royalty free stock images for all types of  businesses. A few images from these sites won’t cost you much money and can give a professional, high quality look to your site.

Here are links to a couple of good image library sites that we use when building websites.

Also, don’t be put off from looking at free image resource sites too such as Flickr. If you see an image on a site that a user has submitted that you want to use on your own website, make sure you ask them for permission first. Quite often you’ll find that they’ll be only too pleased that you chose their picture.

You wouldn’t put small, blurred posters up in your high street shop window so don’t do it on your website home page either.

Some examples of good site home pages that we’ve created for clients

We’ve put a few links to client sites that we’ve created to demonstrate all of the above points and how they can be used to achieve good home page design. Feel free to comment on them or any other aspect of this post.

  1. Mellor and Mottram
  2. Curtain Magic
  3. Showerwall UK

We hope this will help you when thinking about the design for your own home page. Thank you for reading.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Communication, Home Page Design | No Comments »

Help in choosing a good web designer, what to look for, ask and expect

Posted: September 23rd, 2009

Getting your business on the web is very important. If you’re not doing it your competitors will be. However, not everyone is an IT expert and some people may feel intimidated or afraid to dip their toes into the online world. Choosing a good web designer is imperative, but what should you look for in a design company? Are you getting the right advice or are they simply preying on your lack of knowledge and bumping up the price?

We’ve compiled a list of points below that will help you in choosing a good web designer/design company.

Blindfolded businessman, not knowing what he's choosing

Look at testimonials on the designer’s own website

Customer testimonials will give you a good inidication of the level of service received by other clients from the designer or company you’re thinking of approaching to build your website for you. A good web design company will have several testimonials from a range of clients and will keep them up-to-date. If the testimonials are all from 5 years ago you may want to dig a little further.

Have a look at examples of the work done by the designer and actually vist their client sites.

Any decent design company or designer will have a portfolio of their work displayed on their website. You should take a look at these and, rather than just viewing them on the design company’s site, actually visit the websites themselves. We’ve seen instances where client sites look great on the designer’s own site because they’re simply displaying an image, however, upon visitng the actual website it looked nothing like the screen shot shown off by the designer.

The site may even have missing images or text that overlaps itself if it’s not been coded in the correct way. Don’t take the designer’s word for it, have a look for yourself.

Call the designer/design company – see how easy they are to get hold of

Customer service is very important. Sure, it’s great when your website is up and running with no problems, but what happens if something goes wrong? You need to be able to get in touch with support from the design company who built your site. That’s why it’s a good idea to attempt to contact them randomly a few times to see how responsive they are. Do you have to wade through several telephone menus before speaking to someone? Were they helpful when you did speak to them? Have they replied to your emails and if so did you understand what they were saying or was it simply techno jargon that left you feeling like you needed more help?

All of these things should be considered along with the other points mentioned above.

Arrange a face-to-face meeting with the designer

Face to face meetings allow you to get a ‘feel’ for the type of service you’ll be receiving. A good design company will always be willing to visit you at your own premises at a time that’s convenient to you. They should also be willing to allow you to visit them if you want to see their base of operations.

During this meeting a good designer will assess your level of techinical expertise and then converse with you in a way that you can understand, clearly explaining things to you in layman terms if necessary. You should never leave a meeting feeling like you were intimidated or you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself in to. The designer is there to meet your needs, not their own.

Find out about other services that may be useful to you

Besides building a nice new website for you most design companies and designers can also provide other services ranging from printed work to email and web hosting. Take a look at the designer’s website and see what other services they provide. A good design company/designer will be only too pleased to assist you in other areas besides building your site for you.

What happens once your website is finished?

This is a very important point to consider. You don’t want to get involved with someone or an organisation that don’t want to know you once they’ve finished the initial project unless you’re prepared to spend more money with them. You want a relationship with your designer, not a quick flirt. You need to feel confident that should you have any questions or things you need clarifying, your designer will be there for you to answer them.

As recently as a few days ago we were speaking with a client who had purchased a domain name for his company several months ago but wasn’t able to get hold of anyone who could help him out with transferring it to a new host. They simply never returned his calls or answered his emails. I’m pleased to say that we’ve managed to help him out with this situation now and he’s happy again and has now moved his design projects over to us as well.

Final thoughts

If you follow the guidelines above you should feel more confident in choosing who you give your hard earned money to when you’re having your website built. If you would like any further information or advice about this or any other aspect of web design, web hosting, domain name registration or transfer please feel free to contact us

We are Yellow Circle Web Solutions Limited  based in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire and we provide web design, development and hosting services.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Web Design | 3 Comments »