Month: December 2019

As you work on your web design Santee, it is important to remember that visitors have about 5 seconds to decide on whether to stay on your website or to click away. Your top priority has to be grabbing the attention of your target audience by making them feel they are on the website that will give them the answers they need. Building such a website is not easy. There are a number of things you will need to do. 

Have a plan

The first is obviously to have a plan. There are so many templates you can use out there to design your website. You don’t have to bring in an experienced web designer Santee for help. However, as you go through the templates, you have to consider how those templates will meet your visitors’ needs. Before you get started on web design it is paramount that you map out the buyer’s journey from the time they land on your website to the moment they become a paying customer. Which pages will get the most views? Which kind of information will convert visitors? These are just some of the questions that will help you get started on the right foot.

Eliminate the clutter

It is good to be unique but you don’t want to overdo things. That is why you have to compile a list of all the things you have to remove from your website. Complicated animations, long content, sticky web images, auto play media and popups are just some of the things you have to eliminate from your website. Every element you add on your website must make sense. Always consider the value it adds before adding it. 

Include social share and follow buttons

You cannot afford to ignore the power of social shares in 2020. The more social media shares your website gets the more credibility it will have and the more traffic you will get. As you work on your web design Santee you should include social share and follow buttons. These buttons wills erve as non-pushy tools that encourage social sharing.

Add calls-to-action

Your website will not be complete without calls-to-action. Calls-to-action are the main elements that indicate the next step that a visitor should take. Your call-to-action has to be concise and offer value to the visitors. Click here for more information, sign up for a webinar, download our sample Game-Plan and watch the video are some great calls-to-action.

Use the right images

Last but not least you have to be very careful with the images you use on your website. In addition to using relevant images you have to take time to resize them so that they don’t bloat your website. An experienced web designer Santee will recommend you take your own photos instead of relying too much on stock photos.

Web design Santee

It is always exciting to start work on a new web design Santee. However, as you get down to business, it is imperative that you plan everything perfectly. You also need to build the website for your visitors and not for yourself. In this post we will be looking at the crucial things you have to make sure your website does.

Allow visitors to share your content on social media

The majority of your target audiences are on social media. Not reaching out to them will cause you to miss out on a lot of traffic. As a web designer Santee, it is paramount that you add social share and follow buttons on your website. These will make it easy for visitors to share your content through social media. Needless to say, the exposure you get through social media shares is priceless. However, for this to work, you also need to create profiles on the main social networking sites. This will allow visitors to follow you on social media and find out more about you.

Let visitors scroll on the homepage

In the past, the homepage was more of a poster; visitors could not scroll through. This doesn’t have to be the case today. Don’t be afraid of creating a longer homepage for your website. It can have 3 to 5 sections that direct users to the proper areas on your website. The key elements you should include on the homepage are:

• Value proposition
• Overview of services
• Product features
• Intro video
• Testimonials
• Case studies
• Resources
• About us

The goal is to win the trust of visitors right on the homepage. This does not, however, mean you clutter it. Keep everything simple.

Include white space

White spaces make it easy for visitors to read and understand your content. The whitespace will break up the page and increase readability. Your web design Santee must make use of white spaces else your website will look cluttered.

Be optimized for mobile

This is a no brainer. If you don’t optimize your website for mobile devices you will lose a lot of traffic. More than 60% of the visitors you get will be accessing your website on their mobile devices. Make sure all the elements are loading perfectly to avoid high bounce rates. A responsive web design will adjust to fit any screen it is being viewed on.

Have no errors

Last but not least you have to go through your website regularly to make sure it has no errors. All the discussed facts have to be accurate and the website should have no grammatical errors. All the links must work as they should and no element should have an issue. You also need to make sure that the web pages load super-fast.

Web design Santee

Working on a new web design Santee can be very exciting as this gives you a chance to build something fresh, better and with original content that funnels more clients in. However, for you to achieve the amazing results you want you must conduct critical research on your industry and prevailing trends. Hiring the most dependable web designer in your area will also be priceless.

Domain name and Security

A domain name is like an address to your website and just like a fingerprints, it uniquely identifies your website and cannot be duplicated or shared by different websites. When thinking about a new web design, it is important to choose a domain name with care. As a web designer Santee this should top your priority list before designing a website. In addition to choose the best domain name, you have ensure your website is securely hosted. This ensures visitors do not receive a warning signs in regards to security when visiting your website.

User experience

Visitors to your website expect the pages to load up in less than 2 seconds. An experienced web designer will focus on reducing the load time of web pages. This is achieved by doing things like resizing the images properly, making use of caching and minimal coding. A good web designer should have a balance of the texts, images, layouts, menus, buttons and other elements on the website to ensure it is pleasing to the eyes. The quickest way to lose potential clients is giving them a terrible user experience..

Content

Content is the should of your website. It is what draws visitors to your website. A good web designer Santee will ensure there is content originality and freshness. He will also ensure the content is easy to understand by using clear text and a language that visitors can understand. Poor content will lead to high bounce rates, which will impact your website negatively.

Mobile friendliness

In a world where more than 60% of internet users rely on their mobile devices to access the internet, it is important for you to design a responsive website that can adjust itself to fit any screen it is being viewed on. This will help get more traffic and rank the website well in search engine results. A good web design also ensures that a website is optimized for all devices and web browsers.

These points will help you design a better website for personal use or for your business. For a professional website it is always a great idea to work with an experienced web designer Santee. He will help you achieve better results.

Web design Santee

Web design Santee has been made easy by the presence of online tools. However, a web designer has to be keen when designing and developing a website. This is so as to avoid common mistakes during the development process. The following are four ways of fixing common mistakes during website creation.

Optimization of images

Image optimization tops the list of mistakes made in web development. Image size plays a big role in the load speed of a website. You can check your website’s load speed using Google analytics. As a web designer Santee you have to consider the image dimensions, format, and compression as well as file size when uploading an image to a website.  When images are not optimized to the required size, they tend to bloat a website and in turn affect the load speed of individual web pages. It is therefore important to correctly size the images for optimal load speed.

Content Structure

It is important to ensure the content used clearly communicates your product and services to the target audience. After the website has been created, it is important for a web designer Santee to conduct content audit starting with the menus and pages of the website. The goal is to ensure the navigation options are clearly labeled in a language that is easy to understand. The audit should also focus on making sure the content has correct information and that the target audiences will relate with the message. You also need to make sure that the content is optimized for search.

Copy and paste

The worst mistake you can make is that of having plagiarized content on your web design Santee. Copying content will cause your website to be flagged and you might end up being sued for copyright infringement. It is paramount to maintain originality. Your website needs to have fresh content. You also need to revisit your key word strategy.

Navigation

As a web designer Santee, it is important to ensure your website is user friendly and easy to navigate on all platforms including smart devices. The best thing is there are user friendly tools like Hotjar that will help you understand whether menus and buttons on your website are used across devices or not.

The key to avoiding most web development mistakes is keeping up with the trends and always leveraging on professional help whenever you are stuck. Making time to review your website regularly will also help you pinpoint mistakes and learn how to make it better.

Web design Santee

As a web designer Santee, the last thing you want is to be left behind by the time. You want to be up-to-date in order to keep capturing the attention of your audiences. The problem, however, is that creating great content is never easy and keeping up with the trends requires a great deal of effort. In this post we will be taking a quick look at the things you have to do as you create content for your website in 2020.

Track your visitors

The key to creating great content for your website lies in learning more about your target audience. To do this you need to track your visitors. You should know where they are coming from, their geographic information, what they click on, how long they take on your web page and how many other actions they take. This data will help you refine your content and grow your business. The good news is there are so many free tools and techniques you can use to collect this data. The best tool you can implement in your web design Santee is Google Analytics.

Choose a content type with care

With the data about your target audience you will be able to build better content. However, knowing where to start can be hard. You cannot always talk about your products or services. You need to explore other topics but always keep your content both interesting and relevant. Some of the best topics you should consider writing on, especially on your blog, include the following:

• Beginners guide
• ‘How to’ guides
• Product reviews
• Data and stats
• Case studies
• Best practices
• Checklists
• Interviews with famous people
• Detailed reviews or testimonials from clients
• Strategies for common problems
• Pros and cons on various subjects

Keyword research

Creating great content is important but for this content to be found you must use the right keywords. You need to research keywords and also come up with a pyramid of keywords. Your content should include a primary keyword followed by other additional but relevant keywords. Long-tail keywords work best more so when you consider voice searches are more common today. You also need to add keywords in your URLs whenever possible.

Revise your content regularly

The last thing you want is for your web content to be full of mistakes or to be outdated. That is why as a web designer Santee you need to revisit and revise your content regularly. The key here is to correct mistakes and ensure the content is still relevant.

Web designer Santee

In 2020 you don’t want to just put together a simple web design Santee using a free web builder and call it a day. Your website needs to be more than a calling card. This is the beacon to your company and how interesting and professional it is will determine its overall success. As you get ready to thrive in 2020, here are a few important things you should focus on.

Usability and accessibility

User interface design and user experience design are crucial to optimize right down to the final line of code. The online competition in 2020 will only intensify. Your target audiences will have more options and if your website is lacking in any way when it comes to accessibility or usability it will end up experiencing a high bounce rate. As a web designer Santee you have to account for every pixel on the website you create. The website has to be usable, have relevant elements and limit the number of clicks that are needed for a visitor to get desired information. On-page citation links, call-to-actions and sticky headers will help reduce the number of clicks.

Have a strong and clear message

Having a remarkable web design Santee is not enough. You also need to have a strong and clear message. Your presence needs to be bold and should have a unique message. Make it clear what your website is about and state your value proposition. Your home page should also tell visitors right away what your business is about and why they should do business with you. Work hard to be different with the presentation of your brand. A cliché website will not cut it in 2020.

Ensure your pages load super-fast

The load speed is very important. Every millisecond counts thus the reason you have to pay close attention to the factors that optimize your page speed. These include graphics and images, size of your content, reliability of your hosting company and how well coded your website is. You must also not use too many plugins as they too will bloat your website. Try and code more functions instead of using plugins.

Visitor tracking

Last but not least you have to leverage on tracking tools like Google Analytics. Knowing where your visitors are coming from, where they spend the most time when on your website and so on will give you the insight you need to make your website better in 2020. 2020 is not the year to rely on guesswork. Act on solid data.

There is a lot more that needs to be done to make your website better but the aforementioned points will get you started in the right direction. You must also not hesitate to seek expert help whenever you are stuck.

Web design Santee

As you work on your web design Santee you have to think about the type of Calls-to-action you will add. Failure to add great CTAs will mean the difference between converting visitors into clients and having lots of traffic with no sales. There are several things you have to think about when working on your CTAs. Here are the main things you should do.

Clear and direct

The first thing every experienced web designer Santee will recommend you do is keep your CTAs clear and direct. Mincing words in the CTAs will not cut it. You have to be upfront and direct. Doing so ensures there is no confusion on what a visitor needs to do.  It is always a good idea to ask for feedback from other departments on what they think about a CTA before you add it to your website. Consult with the customer service and sales teams. Here are a few examples of clear and direct CTAs:

• Request Quote
• Learn More
• Get Pricing
• Contact Us
• Click Here

The above CTAs are short and clearly state the action that needs to be taken.

Timely

Just because you have a great CTA does not mean you add it anywhere on the website. Great marketing is like dating. You cannot ask someone to marry you on the first date, can you? That is being too forward and you risk losing them. You have to visitors in gradually then ask them what you need them to do. A well placed CTA will build trust. You don’t want to place the Buy Now CTA at the end of a blog but you can include the Learn about our services, or view other articles or download helpful digital guides at the end of a blog post. The right CTA at the right time will establish a strong and lasting relationship with prospects.

Unique

Last but not least your CTA has to be unique. Don’t use cliché type of CTAs. Customize them so that they are unique to your website. Instead of saying View Portfolio you can use See The Difference or Watch the Transformation. Your visitors are looking at the websites of your competitors. You don’t want to appear as a copycat.

Your web designer Santee can help pick the best CTA and also help you place them at the right spots on your website. The key, however, is to create CTAs that compel action, and entice visitors to do something.

Web design Santee

If you have been thinking of creating a web design Santee you probably have thought about using WordPress. This is the most popular content management system in the world powering over 34% of all active websites. It is mostly considered because it is user-friendly and offers innumerable options to create a professional website without spending too much time in coding. The big question, however, is this: is WordPress secure? If this is the question on your mind then this post is for you and the simple answer is ‘Yes’.

Open sources versus closed source CMS

WordPress is an open source platform which means the developers can view the source code, create plugins and also make modifications with ease. As a result of this, WordPress has a huge developer community which ensures bugs are identified and fixed fast. The platform also gets regular security patches and most of them are updated automatically. A web designer Santee will prefer WordPress because it is more secure than proprietary CMS.

With closed source platforms, you will be at the mercy of the developer or a small developer community. In most cases, close source CMS lack the bandwidth needed to make regular updates. This means new issues will not be fixed with as much ease as on WordPress.

Hosting

If you have done your research on website security then you know your hosting service provider has a part to play in the level of security your website has. When working on a web design Santee on WordPress it is always a great idea to use hosting firms that specialize in WordPress. Doing so will ensure optimal speed and security. Your hosting provider should also offer:

• Malware scanning
• Robust backup/restore tools
• Offer additional security tools like limiting login attempts

Organizational policies

While WordPress is a very secure platform there are a number of things you need to do to improve the security of your website. They include the following:

• Password policy. Only use strong passwords on all information systems including WordPress.
• Two-factor authentication: Implementing this on your WordPress CMS will make it harder for hackers to login to your website.
• Manage user accounts: If an employee or contractor separates from your organization you should terminate their user accounts immediately.
• Limit access: Don’t give access to everyone in your organization. Be careful who you give access to your website.
• Update regularly: Updates are meant to add more features and fix bugs and vulnerabilities. Make a schedule to update your website regularly including all the plugins.
• Use SSL: The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) guarantees links between a web browser and web server are encrypted.

WordPress is the most secure CMS out there. You, however, need to take extra steps to enhance the security of your WordPress website. The aforementioned points will get you started in the right direction.

Web design Santee