Website Design, Hosting, Marketing Tips and Tricks
Some people think that throwing up any type of design for their website will be sufficient to start a successful online business. They are greatly mistaken because your website should reflect the business you’re trying to promote. Before you even begin the design certain questions should be asked.
Will your website be personal, professional or for pleasure?
Your website is the first impression a visitor gets of your business so if it doesn’t look professional, loads slowly or is hard to navigate your visitors will go elsewhere. The website you got designed several years ago may now be outdated and in need of an overhaul.
So how do you find a professional web designer?
Your website is the very first thing visitors see before doing business with you so you need to find a professional web designer who will design a website that reflects your business. The first impression visitors get of your site will either inspire them to contact you or click away to one of your competitor’s websites.
Top 12 questions to ask a web designer before building your website
So you decided to get a professional website designed for your business but don’t know what to look for and where to find a web designer that will meet your needs.
Here are the 10 steps for sorting through the process of choosing a web designer.
1. Know the purpose of your website
Is the goal of your site to display information (informational website), sell products (e-commerce website) or to generate new leads (landing page)? Knowing this information before you call a web designer will speed up the hiring process.
Why hire a web designer when there are free pre-made templates or website building software available on the Net? Wouldn’t one of these free options be sufficient for your needs? Won’t it save you time and money?
Let’s look into this topic more deeply.
Here are the top 7 reasons why you should hire a web designer?
1. Design a website that reflects your business
Designing a website that reflects your specific business helps differentiate it from your competitors. For example if you specialize in dog training your website may include a matching logo, background, images and copy that reflects everything about dog training.
2. Place your trust in an experienced professional
When you need your car repaired would you prefer to hire a professional who works on them everyday for a living or ask your do-it-yourself neighbor to repair it? When you hire a professional web designer you benefit from his or her years of experience. He knows what elements go into creating a profitable website and have the confidence to get any of your questions answered.
3. Save time
A professional website contains many parts so hiring a web designer enables you to quickly and easily pull them all together. Some of these parts include:
If you purchase a pre-made template you don’t know what you’re getting. For example it may not display correctly in all browsers because it contains bloated code or the pages load slowly because the graphics are not optimized for the web causing impatient visitors to click away to your competitors’ sites.
4. Save money
There are many technical details included in building a website. You may think you’ll save money by building it yourself, but if you’re not technically inclined (know HTML and CSS) you’ll waste a lot of time and money getting your page to function correctly. A professional web designer will save you a ton of time because he has the knowledge, skills and experience to design, build and test your website.
5. Receive ongoing maintenance
Maintaining your site on a regular basis is a necessity if you want it to function smoothly 100% of the time. For example you may want to change images, install a script, add an e-commerce section or maintain security updates to prevent it getting hacked.
If your website gets hacked it can be a nightmare to restore it back to it’s original state. When you hire a professional web designer he’ll be able to diagnose any problems and offer solutions.
6. Utilize the latest design technologies
The web is constantly changing. A website designed several years ago may no longer generate sales because visitors are turned off by it’s outdated design, slow loading pages or lack of interactivity. Current web designers need to constantly keep abreast of changing technologies so they can implement them in their clients’ designs.
For instance several years ago static HTML pages were sufficient to market your products on the Net however nowadays websites need to include interactive elements (ie social media elements) so the owners can interact with their visitors.
7. Stay ahead of your competitors
Designing a professional website will give your business the edge that no pre-made template can provide. It will be viewed by thousands of people around the world therefore you want it to reflect what you want the world to see. A pre-made template may seem cost efficient and easy, but in the long run, it’s more beneficial to your business to hire a professional web designer.
Want to Hire a Professional Web Designer?
Visit: Maryland Web Design
Watch Why Hire a Web Designer on YouTube
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Top 12 Web Design Mistakes and How to Correct Them
If your website doesn’t rank on the first page of Google or any other search engine you’re not going to receive much traffic unless you use some other traffic generating method such as pay-per-click advertising, video marketing, solo ads, etc. Since search engine optimization is a powerful free method to gain high rankings let’s look at what it takes to reverse engineer a competitor’s website so you can use the same methods they used to gain high rankings and outrank them.
The 2 major factors that contribute to high rankings are:
Is your website attracting lots of traffic?
Are you converting visitors into buyers?
Is it easy to navigate your website?
Does your web copy captivate attention?
Traffic is the lifeblood of your business. The probability of generating sales or new subscribers increases as more visitors view your website content. If your design lacks professionalism or if the content doesn’t captivate the attention of your visitors they will leave and go elsewhere. If the content is not optimized for your targeted keywords you won’t generate free traffic from the search engines.
3 Tips To Improve Conversion Rates and Increase Sales
Are you monitoring your website traffic?
Is your traffic increasing each month?
Where are your visitors coming from?
What keywords are they using to find your website?
Without answering these questions you’ll have no idea if your marketing strategies are working effectively. Traffic is the lifeblood of your online business. If you don’t monitor and analyze your traffic you won’t know what to change to make your online business successful.
Here are 2 Free Tools to Monitor Your Website Traffic
If your website is not structured incorrectly it will affect your rankings. Google and other search engines find websites based on links. External links refer to links pointing to your website from other sites whereas internal links refer to links contained within your site. If your site architecture doesn’t include links to all your pages search engine crawlers won’t be able to find them.
What’s the correct architecture for your site?
No matter how much you optimize your website for the search engines you still need to convert your visitors into buyers. That’s not an easy thing to do because you’re not physically standing next to your potential customer to engage in conversation with him or her.
When a person first visits your web page there are many factors that influence their decision to proceed. For instance they may be multi-tasking therefore you don’t have their undivided attention, your headlines may not peak their interest because they are too general or your website loads too slowly.
Here are my top 7 strategies to increase your website conversion rate
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