8 principles of good web design
In this months blog, we take a look at the elements and principles need to form a cracking successful website, Good website design can be divided up into key elements that ensure the best outcome for your user. Clear, simple design. Designing a website with too many elements that serve no real purpose to your site visitor should be avoided. A clean uncluttered interface that is easy to navigate and guides your visitors to your content is all that’s needed. The classic rule is that if it takes more than three clicks to get to the target content, your navigation is not working. Responsive. A web design that works across any mobile device is absolutely critical. 86% of web searches and visits are conducted from a mobile device. Your website needs to adapt its content and design instantly to the size of screen required. Google now crawls new websites from a smartphone point of view and ranks them higher based on the usability of the mobile version. Typography and fonts. Readability is obviously important. Whilst it’s tempting to use a funky Google font in your design to show your flair and creativity, it could prove too challenging for your visitor to read and may even impact your search ranking. Modern san serif fonts such as Arial or Helvetica are still best to use for body content or can be used in combination with alternative heading fonts for a touch of styling. Images and pictures. Keep the use of images and graphics to the minimum required to emphasise or illustrate the point of the content. Try to use images that convey success, and happiness and add valuable content to your page. Call to action. Let’s be honest, you want your visitors to buy your product or services but have you made this obvious? A well-placed call to action button such as “buy here”, “order today” etc should always be visible to your visitors. Consider this button as your cash register! Colours and mood. Colour plays an important part in great website design. A little bit of research can reveal the physiological aspects of colour usage, for example, red is considered suitable for food-based sites, orange is creative and playful etc Black pages are cool but you need to consider if your user may have to print out information! The mood or voice of your content should be kept consistent and true to your brand. Don’t do wacky or try to be funny if that’s not what you are! Be professional. Quick loading. Again, vital to the success of your website. Pages need to be delivered as quickly as possible, in less than two seconds if you can! Google has greatly emphasised page speed times when choosing to index websites. This can be achieved with most of the principles I have already listed, light uncluttered pages with a minimal amount of images and reusable menu systems help to keep page loading light. A good choice of hosting provider can also play a part in serving your pages. Fresh content. Keep your website content up to date and add new content regularly. This can be done simply by adding a blog or your existing content can be repurposed. For example, if your content was written in 2017, review it and update it for today. Google is always learning about and discovering new content. In conclusion. Keep things clear, easy to read, easy on the eye and fast to load! Not too much to ask for is it? Functional, user-friendly website design will always win the day and keep important search engines interested in your website. Design and write your website for human beings, not robots!
What is the price of a website?
How much does a website cost? If you are a startup or small business, the need for a website is obvious but how much should you pay to get your business online? In this blog, I will outline the known costs involved with buying a website design and also highlight some avoidable mistakes. It starts with your domain name. The vital www. bit that will identify your business online and define your brand. As much as possible, try to keep your domain name short, memorable and easy to spell! Remember that your first choice of name may not be available so you need to be flexible. It can be beneficial to purchase both the .com and .co.uk versions if they are for sale but just the .co.uk version is a good place to start. .net, .biz etc are also options if your first choice is not available. The average price for a .co.uk is around £8.00 to £10.00, with the more popular .com version costing in the region of £15 -£20. At this point, you will simply own the domain. This is not a website! Before purchase, check the hosting packages on offer from the registrant to see if you will have the option to transfer the domain if you should need to or if the hosting packages suit your intentions for the website are. A good starting point is UK based provider I use, called Fasthosts. This brings us nicely onto hosting for your website. Sometimes referred to as ‘parking’, your domain needs to be attached to a hosting package in order to create your site. Typically, charges are made monthly or yearly and can start from around £90 a year depending on the services you require. The hosting package should also provide you with your email servers. I would also highly recommend that your website includes SSL. This is the Secure hosting that gives your website the small padlock in the search bar. SSL can help with Google search and provide confidence to your visitors, even if you don’t sell products on your website. Costs for SSL are in the region of about £75 per annum but again, check before hitting the buy button. So that’s the basics sorted out and you are now ready to find a designer or maybe create your own design. A good starting point is to decide what the purpose of your website will be. Do you just need an online presence, are you looking to sell products and services or do you need to communicate to your team? The purpose of your website can greatly affect the costs of design. A straightforward brochure-style website which is usually four or five pages, would typically cost £500 to £800 for a one-off design and build. Static, evergreen content giving your business an online presence would be the way to go. If you need something a little more dynamic that you can edit yourself, consider using a Content Management System such as the increasingly popular, WordPress. I will add more blogs about WordPress soon, but in a nutshell, it’s a free, open-source platform for blogging and supporting web designers. You are reading this blog on WordPress and most blogs are built on it today. As I have mentioned, WordPress is free, so make sure you are not charged for it! However, if you don’t have the time or the patience to learn web building software, you will need to employ a designer! Most reputable designers know how to extract the best from WordPress to deliver a fantastic website and which plugins and add-ons your website can utilise. Content is king! To keep costs in control, consider creating your own content. Write the copy yourself. You obviously know everything there is to know about your business idea, so you are the best person to write about it! The same applies to your photography and images. Your web designer will be delighted to receive as much content as possible! Again, if you are not a writer or the next hotshot photographer, factor the cost of content creation into your budget. Research about your business will take time and cost money! Which conveniently leads us to e-commerce websites and regularly updated content. By definition, e-commerce websites are time-consuming and adding a 100 strong product range with individual shipping costs etc takes time! Most designers will charge a monthly fee to manage your web-shop or a high setup fee if you want to update it yourself. At this stage, consider the return on your investment. It’s difficult to put a price on e-commerce websites but you want to be thinking in the four-figure area! So there you are the basic costs to getting your business online. It is worth remembering that by nature, websites are never truly in a finished state. Technology and trends change all of the time and it is important to keep your website fresh with regular content and images. In summary, the process of establishing your website does not need to be expensive and it is best to set your budget in advance and make sure that you get the biggest bang for your buck. It’s definitely worth spending some time researching the options available to you. Domain name and hosting: approximately £100 per year SSL Certificates: approximately £75 per year Website Design: Your budget depends.
10 website essentials for success
Running a small business can require a lot of organising to get the most from your valuable time. So, to that end, we will be building up a portfolio of useful blogs and articles that will provide you with a quick reference across many areas of marketing and growing your business. In this first blog, we highlight the essential basics every website should have for success. Secure hosting package. Simply put, that is where you see the small padlock symbol in the address bar of a website. This is vital if you run an online store as it provides a secure network for purchases but it is also needed to boost your rankings in searches, particularly on Google. Most hosting companies offer SSL Certificates. Fast loading pages. Seems obvious, but the quicker your web page loads, the better the retention rate of your visitors. Again it is also an important cue for Google to rank your website higher in searches. The quicker the site, the better for customers, and the better listing. Useful images. Does your website carry a lot of unnecessary images? Does the imagery you use help explain your product or services? Large and pointless images slow the page delivery and can prove annoying to visitors who can be forced to wait. Clear navigation. Is your website easy to navigate and intuitive to use? The ideal situation is that it should take no more than three clicks to get to the content you are looking for. Clutter-free. It can be quite common for businesses to try to cram in as much information as possible on the homepage of their website. It’s tempting if you offer many different products and services. However, most business is done with companies that are easy to deal with. A frictionless transaction. Clear messaging. In a similar vein to removing clutter, are the words you use clear, to the point and helpful? Poetic, flowery and industry jargon-filled headlines look great but do they serve a purpose? Don’t be afraid to get straight to the point. Ask for sales, and explain clearly how using your business will improve the life of the customer. Easy contact. Surprisingly this is often overlooked. Is it easy to actually get in touch with you? You wouldn’t make the cash register hard to find in a shop so why do that on your website? Provide contrasting coloured buttons and call to action sections on your homepage to guide your visitor on what to do next. Prove what you do. People visit websites to find the answer to a problem or to purchase a product or service. Make sure your homepage includes genuine, provable testimonials and links to satisfied customers. This will give confidence to your visitor that you are credible to do business with. Up to date. Vital that you keep your pages up to date and freshened up. A website with a 2011 copyright notice, and links to defunct social media pages (Google + closed 2 years ago!) will give the impression you don’t care or even worse, you have closed. And finally. Does your site pass the grunt test? In other words, could you show your homepage to a caveman for 10 seconds, turn it off and then ask them what it is your business does. Can they tell you? If it is not immediately obvious to our caveman or your visitors what you do, how you can help and how they can contact you in those first 10 seconds, your website needs a re-design. Keep it simple.
