Website Design for Small Businesses
Posted on May 12, 2007
Designing for any online business is a vital and serious issue as it says a lot about the business, its owners and product or services. It is the thing which keeps a customer on a website and its easiness compels and convinces him to buy a product. So it is important to have a professional look.
No doubt launching a website for small business is a hilly task. To achieve it you better do some research on your needs; the site purpose, the target audience and finally look for skilled website designers, developers and graphic designers or a designing company. There are many different website design companies, offering different facilities. However for gaining an effective internet presence what should be the look of site of small businesses? This article will guide you in understanding the structure for your site specific design. Keep this article as a reference point. When you go through the process of development then check out each part to have an effective web site for your products and services in accordance with your target audience.
Choosing web designer- Don’t go by the cheap web design. This will certainly diminish your professional image among potential customers other than financial losses. To have a professional web design, don’t compare web designers by their price; always look at your requirements regarding the type of service, internet marketing and updates you needs w.r.t. growth.
Domain Name
Choose simple, short and relevant domain name for your site. Don’t get settle down on anything to get your web space as every word on your web site has relevancy in its success. Being a serious online venture you should register it for at least two years. You can get your own domain name by paying as little as $ 17-18 for 2 year registration with ICANN approved sites such as Register . You can find out if the name you want is still available by using the free search tool on the sites.
Web Hosting
Web hosting can be obtained free of cost from content portal sites such as Yahoo! Geocities . Such sites invite users to establish Web sites on their domain in order to create a critical mass of core content on their online property. The user does not have to pay for service because it is subsidized by banner advertising. As they do not charge, they offer limited service depth and relative quality. They do not even provide customized hosting services where domain names are personalized.
So, avoid getting lured by the free hosting providers as nothing is really free. It mostly retards the downloading speed of web pages. Even avoid messing around with small time web hosting. Affiliate yourself with a reputable company that provides top-notch service and have the resources to provide fast and reliable servers.
Text Content
Content of the site deserves utmost attention as it’s the words that people read, it’s the words that call people to action, and it’s the words that sell. The rest also helps, but a site with poor content is an as bad as a site without any words.
Keywords
Order to end up high on search engine use the relevant keywords and place them accordingly on a web page. The number of times each word appears on a web page is the factors that determine how high you end up in search results.
Regarding resolution
Sure that your pages should work at any resolution, from 800×600 to 1280×1024 and beyond. Currently the most widely used screen size is 1024 x 768. Of course, the general guideline is to optimize for your target audience’s most common resolution, so the size will change in the future. You shall see the statistics for the month of January for the last 2 years provided by w3schools seem to reflect the general trend we are seeing on the Web.
Year Higher 1024 x 768 800 x 600 640x 480 Unknown
2007(January) 26% 54% 14% 0% 6%
2006(January) 17% 57% 20% 0% 6%
It’s always safer to keep your web site at less than 750 pixels wide as you don’t want to alienate your visitors by having them scroll to see the whole page. Make sure that that your web pages show up the same in all web browsers.
HTML Tags
You will have to make sure that your title, description, and keyword meta tags are bang on with the text on each web page you build. The linking structure of your website should have to be good as it’s easy for the visitors as well the search robots to understand the details. All of your optimized pages must be linked from the home page itself.
Graphics
It’s good to place web graphics in context with the information being presented. If you have product descriptions on your web site, then you should have the related graphic depiction next to them. Avoid using graphic that has no any relation with your text. Overusing graphics will only make the site look amateur. Make sure if you use web graphics as links that they work at all times. There is nothing worse than clicking on a graphic that does not work.
Conclusion
Basic tips for small business website are just the tip of the iceberg. You should also have to provide correct contact information plus regular updating w.r.t. your products; which I already explain in detail in my earlier articles. Web design can make or break your business. So always remember to create a site that is appealing and easy to navigate.
Your website should be like an investment and for that you are certainly going to receive a return.
Alex Roderick
The author is Business Head for The Web Design Company, http://www.webdesigningcompany.net . It deals in web site design, website redesign, flash, 3D animation, logos, Banner Adds etc.
Author Bio: Alex Roderick
The Author is the owner of a web site design Company, and providing Web Design and Development Solutions to clients across USA and UK for affordable and sensible prices.
Approved by Niko123- Create Online BusinessTags: learn web design, web design firms, advanced web design, web design directory, website design, web design atlanta, good web design
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It should be remembered to get a high ranking in the top three search engines- Yahoo, Google and MSN while designing your website. A web designer needs to consider a variety of online selling principles while designing an eCommerce website.
In designing a website we must take into consideration the following facts. Content is very important in website designing. Planning and organizing are the most crucial steps in designing a website. Well, driving high traffic to website is very important, but what’s even more important, is designing a website in that way which makes them stays longer.
While designing your website, it is important that you switch from your own profit-oriented perspective to the prospective customers’ perspective. Keywords are one of the most important areas to consider when designing a website/webpage. If you don’t have a website or have a poorly designed website, you should consider creating or re-designing a website to adequately market your products.
It is not only about designing a website. During designing your website, remember to try to get as much meet or substance to the top of your code just below the tag as you can. Possibly you would like some help in writing proposals, designing a latest website, or sending out press releases. I’ve listed few items that I feel you must know a little bit about before seriously embarking on designing a website.
Database templates also facilitate you to make changes to your site much more easily, and help you change certain elements without recreating the entire page from scratch.
Similarly, thinking about the navigation, how the site will work, and why users are coming to your site will give you greater insight to what you need to achieve when designing a new website. You can find freelancers to take on just about any other non-administrative project you can think of - designing your website, writing a business plan, sending out press releases etc.
Web designing is a perfect combination of creativity & technical expertise and both are equally important. Just to name a few, there are - Selection of a product, preferably a niche product - Selection and registration of URL - Acquiring web hosting for your website - Designing the website - Optimizing the website for top search engine placement and ranking & Submission of your website.
Business owners and marketers have a tendency to think in broad terms about their marketing objective by focusing on ones such as “generating traffic” or “designing a website. It always happens that html editors write clumsy tags, especially when you amend the webpage layout again and again during your website designing process, which may possibly deter search engines from reading your web page and in turn poorly affect your search engine ranking. Building and designing website is not as difficult as you think.