A good website is a valuable investment

Designing and developing a business website to maximise attracting potential clients to your business is a skilful task and although some businesses try to do this inhouse outsourcing the task can be seen as an investment.

Utilising the services of a web designer will usually give you a more professional looking website and a web developer will ensure that your site is working efficiently. Optimising the website so that it is more productive in terms of being found when searches are carried out will incur extra costs, but the resulting increase in business should offset this.

The first impression that a visitor to your site will have will be the website home page and so this should be appealing, clear and creative so that visitors can quickly find links to relevant pages and contact information. Links to a map showing the location of the business can be useful especially if your business is often carried out face to face with clients at the business premises.

Agreeing a budget for the website initially and then an ongoing fee for managing the site and keeping it up to date is a good idea and will ensure that your investment will see returns for your business.

Could your website colour scheme affect its appeal?

Website design has developed incredibly over the last few years and most websites have amazing graphics and page design elements aimed at attracting clients to read the content on the site and click through to sales but one thing that they all have in common is a colour scheme.

When you are deciding on the colour scheme for your website it is important to think about the main colour theme you are going to use, not forgetting the colour of action buttons and banners as recent research has shown that different colours can appeal to certain people and even affect their behaviour.

Some good examples of this can be seen in websites which advertise products for children. They usually have bright vibrant colour schemes which are used to convey a sense of fun and enthusiasm. However, this colour scheme would not be suitable for a website selling products to adults as too many colours on pages can make the website look unprofessional. Three main colours should be the maximum number used in general with black, white and grey neutral colours used alongside them.

Research into website colour schemes will show new designers’ common themes such as using blue to show professionalism for example for financial institutions and health advice sites as people often associate this colour with trust and dependability.

The importance of ensuring your website is mobile compatible

With many websites receiving the majority of their traffic through mobile devices or tablets, it is vital that your site is designed and programmed in such a way that that ensures everything works and displays exactly as it should. It is not acceptable to simply just shrink every element on the page to fit on a mobile device as often when doing this, you make some elements too small to read or to be able to click. In the eyes of the search engine, this means the site is not compatible for mobiles.

Often you may take the navigation off the page and put in as a separate flyout menu. Sometimes it is worth not displaying certain banners or elements on mobile devices as they simply will not work. This can be fairly straightforward to do.

Before setting a new site live or even if your site is already live, it is vital that you test it on a number of different devices using different operating systems and screen sizes as this can alter the appearance quite a bit and you may need to change some of the code in order to get it working correctly on as many if not all devices as possible.

The value of video advertising on websites explored

Website designers are having to make their websites all singing all dancing if they are to attract more visitors than their rivals and one of the ways they can do this is to use a wide range of visuals on their pages. Images and video footage needs to be good quality and relevant to the products and services advertised on the website without making the visitor feel overwhelmed and causing them to click away.

The type of advertising video that can be used will largely be dependent upon the business. For example, if a company is selling a product then a demonstration of the product and its capabilities would be helpful but if the business is offering a service, then video footage of customer reviews would be more suitable. An important thing to remember is that the video footage needs to capture the potential client’s interest without being overly long.

In recent years with the increasing number of social media platforms available to us there is a cost-effective way of using video to promote and grow businesses by using social media business pages. Demonstrations of products and services can be shown more clearly in a video giving the potential customer a better overview.

Do charity websites help to raise funds?

Charities are always on the lookout for new ways to raise funds and one way they can do this is to have their own website but how can having a website increase the amount of funding that a charity receives?

The first way that a charity website helps is to raise awareness of the charity. Anyone searching for charity shops or volunteering opportunities in a specific area will come across the website during their search and will be able to find out more details about the charity and the causes that it supports. The website can be used to publicise fund raising events and lotteries that the charity may run and request funding donations for specific equipment or services.

Although the cost of setting up a website may be costly initially, it should be seen as an investment resulting in increased income for the charity. A simple website need not break the bank and can always have additional pages added at a later date. Many web designers have a fixed price option for a standard website with roughly five pages which can include pages about the charity, how someone can get involved with fundraising and success stories about people that have been help through the charity’s work.

Adding more graphics to your website

When designing and creating a website it is very important to get the balance right between graphics and text. Text is really useful for visitors but also for the search engines. Search engines such as Google cannot read text within flat images but it can read and to a point understand keywords and phrases within text. This helps Google decide what the page is about and therefore how to rank it. Images are added in more for the benefit of the viewer as it is a bit of a put off if you land on a page full of text. Some people haven’t got time or simply don’t want to have to read reams of text, so adding in images can help break the page up.

Info graphics can be really useful when added to your website. An info graphic is a picture but it also contains text. It may be a diagram for example, a graph or simply a call to action explaining a products uses. IT is a good idea to have a batch of graphics and infographics that you can use in multiple locations. You may also want to use these across your social media platforms where images can have a greater response than text.

Redesigning your website for Christmas

As Christmas approaches many businesses make changes to their websites to embrace the festive period. This may be changing your banner, adding an animated gif to the site or a pop up. Although you may not want to display this just yet, it is worth getting in early with your developer and designer to ensure that it is made and ready to go live when you are.

If you have a lot of extra products you want to sell in the run up to Christmas, again you need to get them on the website early. Ideally a few months before Christmas to allow them to be indexed by google. Don’t forget to submit a new sitemap to ask Google to index the new pages quicker. You should also think about any special offers you may want to have. Some businesses do an offer based on an advent calendar. Each day the visitor gets to open a door and find out what their new offer is. This can be great at not only getting people to your site but encouraging them to revisit it each day. The more they revisit your site the more likely they are to make a purchase from it.

How networking can help you get web development work

Networking is still a fantastic way to promote your business and make new business contacts. Historically most marketing was done through networking but since a lot of it is now done online through social media sites or websites, networking has dropped slightly in popularity. It is important not to dismiss the value of networking. Many businesses owners attend networking events, some of which are free and some which you either have to pay to attend or you have to be a registered member.

You need to do your research about the events as some are very formal and you will often meet in a hotel conference room or hall venue, whilst others often take place at someone’s house or even in the pub.

Networking doesn’t just have to be face to face although lots of people prefer that. During the height of the pandemic, lots of networking still took place just online via video calls and chat rooms. This can be a little more difficult as only one person can talk at a time but can still work well for some businesses.  

With web design you can easily promote your business by showing the other members examples of your work you have done.