5 tips for improving your web design

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Thanks to the prominence of DIY site builders and affordable web development teams, anyone can try their hand at building their own website. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should try and make your mark in the digital world.  
There are a plethora of factors which distinguish good websites from the majority of poor, and even average ones.  
If you answer ‘no’ to any of these questions, it’s time for you to take a look at your site. After all, your website is the first impression that online consumers get of your company: you wouldn’t have a physical storefront in tatters, so why would you have an inaccessible, subpar site? 
Here are 5 tips to ensure that your web design is as good as it can be… 

Solid Foundations 
Many people are eager to get their own piece of e-commerce, but make sure you don’t rush into things. Map things out, and make sure you have a long-term plan for your site. 
What are your customer’s needs, and why are they visiting your site? Don’t make your site specialize in one area, allow yourself room for growth and development in the future.  
Keep it Simple 
There’s nothing wrong with keeping your site concise. Short, sharp sentences keep attention spans much more than lengthy, descriptive paragraphs. Similarly, there’s nothing wrong with making your site accessible: rid your site of any stocky images, excessive animations, lengthy content and irrelevant elements of the site.  
Equally, make sure your site’s navigation is simple. Streamline your content to avoid any bounce back; ensure that people have no reason to leave your site through excessive functionality or an abundance of features.  
Be Sociable 
If you’re looking at making a website, chances are you have a pre-existing social media following. Make sure you don’t miss out on a sizeable portion of traffic by implementing social sharing buttons.  
Follow Up with Site Maintenance  
There are plenty of free tools available that can help you make the most of your site once it’s launched. Sharing tools like SumoMe and Shareaholic help you utilize your existing following.  
SEO tools in content management systems are just as accessible, and can really help you expand your reach. But be careful – you may need help with the construction of a site, and you may also need a hand to best utilize social tools to maintain your site. If you’re uncertain, digital marketing experts always come in handy.  
Never stop testing your site, too. Always check for broken links, easy design changes, working buttons, keywords, loading times, and site performance. By continually testing, you can identify popular content, and identify areas which require improvement. This is a best practice and one which is often overlooked.  
Mobile Optimisation.
It’s rumored that over 60% of mobile users won’t return to a site that isn’t optimised for mobile and will go to a competitor’s site instead. Hence mobile optimisation isn’t an option, it’s a necessity. Depending on the nature of your site, this is something that you should implement and consider as early as possible.  
Check out our wide range of services and offers to help your site make its mark.  

Using Images Effectively on Your Webpage

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It’s something of a given that using images on your webpages will undoubtedly make for a better viewing experience for visitors on your site – bland, lifeless pages crammed with walls of text will render your pages almost inaccessible to a significant chunk of your target audience. With that in mind though, it’s also imperative you consider the purpose of any images you use, as one wrong choice can in turn have the adverse effect and potentially dissuade visitors from using your site.
For obvious reasons, put some thought into what image/s you intend on using. While it’s true that pages will look void of life and dull without one, you mustn’t fall into the trap of thinking anything will do. Additionally, there are several other factors you ought to consider when adding photos to your website. Is it relevant to the content of your site? Does it correspond with the overall aesthetic of the site? Have you thought about the placement and what benefits or disadvantages that may bring about? Would your page benefit from multiple images?
So you’ve picked your image, now what? Visually, a simple image can help de-clutter your posts, sure. But think about how the image can work for you. Part of The Nielsen Norman Group – an evidence-based user research site, Jakob Nielsen took part in an eye-tracking study that evaluated the impact of images on websites. This study concluded a number of things, namely that users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to “jazz up” webpages.
Notice how the photo used was almost entirely ignored, as it contributes nothing to the page other than a means to fill a blank space. While the students pictured are clearly relevant to Yale School of Management, it does next to nothing in the way of supplying information on how to apply. As such, it’s vital that you put thought into your image usage and whether it’s useful to your users.
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Consider the following:
• Does the image convey a message?
• How do you personally respond to the image, and does it draw your attention?
• If your photo is intended to market a product, does it illustrate the concept of what you’re marketing – can you envisage yourself using the product?
It’s worth considering how the image and its placement can encourage users to hone in on specific areas of your page; utilise images that quite literally point to your content!
There are also of course, less obvious things to contemplate when using images. For example, file size is indeed an issue – typically speaking, the average webpage is 1.28mb. More than half of that is attributed to images alone. What does this information mean for your site? Well, should your site be dependent on its use of images, you may find that it slows down your user’s experience; this is especially true of those using mobile and tablet devices. For help reducing the file size of larger images, there are many free image optimisation apps such as TinyPNG and Smush. it that can save you time and hassle.
There are many benefits to using images on your site that transcend filling space and maintaining a certain aesthetic – practice incorporating them into your pages to improve the user experience. A little thought can go a long way, and providing your content is up to standard, you’ll be reaping the rewards in no time.

Is a website important with today’s social media?

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Let’s face it we have enough to worry about when running our business without having to consider the cost benefits of time we spend on different customer communications. With a website, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Local Listings sites and the myriad of other methods to enable the world to locate our business, the array of choice is sometimes overwhelming. ‘Oh I don’t worry about that – I have a website’ is often a phrase that I hear from customers who are often satisfied that they have an online presence. They believe that this means that they can be found by anybody searching for them and customers will come flocking to their business. Of course, this isn’t always the case unless you are selling something extremely rare or unique.
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There are also the new generation of business people who prefer a Facebook only presence – they can have a business page, which acts in some ways like a website. They have no hosting costs and they can maintain the site without any experience or technical knowledge. Of course, they are at the mercy of Facebook, if the rules change then so does their online presence. Facebook changed the way businesses can be found through Facebook – this decreased the chances of businesses being found. There was no recourse for these businesses – this is one of the risks of placing your online presence into the hands of a company such as Facebook.
Our customers are a varied bunch who will choose which technology they want to find a business such as yours, some will search through Google, others via social media and some via listing sites. So is the advice from this blog really that you should be listed everywhere – well yes – if you have the time to maintain all of the different sites that hold your presence. If not identify who are your target market – what methods do they use to locate your business, and then select the least number of methods to make your company available online. If you were to pick just a few I would always suggest a website, google+ and Facebook as a minimum – these balance the time and reach that you are probably looking for along with adding some oomph to your google rankings.
The good old fashioned website is still the go-to choice for many prospective customers looking for information on your business. Often found via a google search, where customers have entered either your business name and location or found you on the search results pages, your site is the only way you can truly control the image of your company. From the color of the background, the logo, the layout and quality of the images – prospective customers will often choose whether to contact you from your site alone. So yes a well designed, well functioning Website is still a must for any business who seriously wants to promote their business to prospective customers, suppliers and potential employees.

Source: JackEnterprises

Pay Attention! A Quick Guide on Writing Well for Your Website

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If you’re reading this now, it’s almost entirely down to whether you found the headline of this article engaging. Often overlooked, a headline that directly speaks to the reader can work wonders for your content, in ensuring your users take the time out of their busy day to read what you’ve got to say. Copyblogger is a free-to-use content marketingwebsite that teaches its users how to create the best possible online content for their users – a study of theirs found that 8 out of 10 people read headline copy, yet only the remaining 20% went ahead to actually digest the article properly. With that in mind, it’s a given that you create strong, thought-provoking, and most importantly relevant headlines for your content, whatever it may be.
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It goes without saying, a strong headline is redundant without informative, evocative content to follow up with. Your site is your platform, and any content your feature will reflect on your business and how it is received. A vital first step to take with your content is to make sure that you are succinct and to the point. If your writing poses questions that don’t get answered for another 500 words, or even at all, it should come as no surprise that readers lose interest and will look elsewhere. Additionally, if your posts aren’t 100% accurate at the time of writing, or the headline promises information your writing doesn’t provide, you are in danger of being branded ‘clickbait’. Put simply, clickbait is a wholly negative internet term that has recently come about with the rise of sensationalist, exaggerated headlines that often mislead people into quite literally clicking on posts and articles that were designed solely for revenue/views/site traffic. Below is a prime example of what is considered clickbait.
Quite noticeably, the headline attempts to lure in readers by deliberately withholding information that can only be garnered through visiting the article. Unfortunately, the internet is chock full of these sorts of webpages, which usually link people to pages ridden with ads and popups ran by spambots – not something you want to be associated with. These practices are easily avoidable, so be aware of how negatively it can impact your business.
In terms of accuracy, it’s important you source any statistics or quotes you haven’t compiled yourself. Additionally, you must properly verify the validity of your sources and check where you are redirecting visitors to. By providing your readers with further access to other quality sources, not only are you being helpful, but the more you do this, the more you’ll notice a by-product of this is that you’re now helping optimise your website for SEO practices, allowing your content to be easily categorised by search engines.
A final note – consistency is another crucial factor in writing well for your audience. Maintaining a consistent stream of engaging, informative content in a recognisable format will see users returning to your site for more. Take Buzzfeed for example; Buzzfeed is a world-leading multi-platform digital media company that delivers a wealth of daily content in an easy-to-read, consistent format for its users. Specific types of posts are categorised accordingly and tailored to a myriad of target audiences. They use not only written word, but animated gifs, videos and images to cater for their user’s individual preferences. This is an interesting point to consider – good writing is not solely dependent on the writing itself, but the piece as a whole. Team informed, engaging and accurate writing with images and quality sources, in an easily accessible, regular format, and you’ll see a marked improvement in how your content is viewed.

Three Website Sins you may be Committing

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The practice of web design might be tried and tested, but that still doesn’t mean that it’s easy. The perfect site is a variable concept which varies greatly on your needs; aesthetics, functionality and content must all be prioritised to cater to your audience and your long-term business plans.
Regardless of how good you are at designing a site, things can often be forgotten, or slip through testing. With more and more ecommerce competition emerging on an almost daily basis, its imperative that your site is as flawless as possible.
With that in mind, here are three website sins that you may be committing.
Sub-Standard Typography
As with many aspects of web design, sometimes it’s best if you keep things simple. Stick to a house style, and don’t overcomplicate things with excessive, vastly varied fonts.
Content may be key, but even the best headline will be ignored if it’s in Comic Sans. Demand attention with your headings, and make sure that body fonts are large enough to be read easily.
Unless you’re writing the small print, it’s best to stay above 14px. Additionally, do some testing, and see if a serif or sans-serif font will be more appropriate for your content and house style. Make your font contrast vividly with the background of your site – use black font on a white background and vice versa: Actually, there’s very few times when you’ll have to vary from this formula.
Also consider line spacing, paragraphs, spacing and text alignment, all of which can easily impact the readability of the content on your site.
A Lack of Colour
While you shouldn’t be afraid of utilising white space, a clean and simple site layout can sometimes fall into blandness. A lack of personality is an instant customer deterrent – even if you just use a single bold accent colour to compliment your site, you’ll create a much greater aesthetic appeal instantaneously.
For example, accent colours need to be bright, in order to draw attention to certain features, buttons and content, in contrast to a monochrome background. Whilst it should be bold, it also shouldn’t clash with any other prominent colours on your site. Finally, it shouldn’t fade into the background, and should be easily reversible if you need to highlight a certain area of your site.
Poor Images
Sub-standard images may not directly impact your users’ experience, but they can still leave a lasting impact. Utilising inferior quality images will lead to severe negative effects on the perception and reputation of your brand. In an increasingly competitive online world, great first impressions are vital, as customers will utilise any excuse to look elsewhere. Cliched stock photos and unrelated images can all impact your site’s bounce rate.
If any of these above sins are present on your site, remember that a single one can severely harm your online reputation.

Social media and how it can work for you!

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Look around – you see it too? You’ll be hard-pressed to find somebody not on their phone or tablet, browsing the internet and scouring social media like it were the daily newspaper. On the surface, social media may seem like a minefield. But with hundreds of sites, apps and services available to the public, each with a different focus and reach, it would be daft to ignore the enormous potential that promoting your business through social media can bring.
Admittedly, it’s not always easy to stay on top of current trends and pop-culture. New platforms and mediums are always sprouting up, while existing ones are rapidly growing and changing at an increasing rate, leaving others obsolete. Just as you become used to an app or service, another one comes along and the public go mad for it. Additionally, with each platform you adopt, you ought to decide on the style, tone and frequency of content you want to be publishing on each – what may work with one service will not necessarily work on another, (and could reflect badly on your business). But as Yoda once said: ‘Persevere you must’*. With that in mind, however many new and quirky apps pop on the scene, it’s an absolute given that you probably shouldn’t ignore long-time staples such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
It’s immensely important you stay relevant in today’s fickle market, or your lack of insight will show. Currently, ephemeral content (or rather, temporary content) has been on the rise for a long time. More and more businesses are taking note and embracing it as an integral part of their marketing campaigns. Why, you say? Personality, transparency, voice. In the age of smartphones and social media, it’s important to appeal to as wide a target audience as possible. Use Snapchat and make a quick video of workplace shenanigans! Showcase daily life at the office through photos on Instagram! Show that your company is comprised of a friendly, fun staff, and that you’re approachable. Give the public consistent, fresh and accessible content they can relate to and remember you by.

According to our market research, 91% of suppliers said they use social media as their primary method of attracting new customers. More than 300 million people use Instagram every day, while on any given day, Snapchat reaches 41% of all 18 to 34 year-olds in the US alone. Those are not figures to turn your nose up at! Increase awareness of your brand – get social!
Maintaining an online presence gives you access to thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of new clients every hour of every day. It is worth nothing though, that poorly managed and badly designed websites and social media campaigns can also damage your business too. Before you go, here are some tips and tricks for businesses looking to dip their toe in the sea of social media:
• First and foremost – take heed of what’s going on with your competitors. You can learn a great deal from your rivals, what’s working and what’s not, and it may well spark a new idea for your campaign and how you want to run your social media.
• Hashtags! Almost every popular form of social media functions using hashtags. Using hashtags, your content will be much easier to access and search for, as well as being grouped together alongside past posts also using the hashtag. This means customers can filter out and narrow down the content that matters to them most, without needing to scour through reams of previous posts that might not be relevant to them.
• Does your business have a website? No? What are you doing?! Get to it! Use your social media posts to generate interest in your webpage, include direct links to it within your posts.
• Finally, modernize said website! There is no use in creating a run-of-the-mill, generic site that’ll look dated and ugly alongside your competitors.
Solihull Web Design

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Which Search Engine Should Your Digital Marketing Target?

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When delving into the world of digital marketing, you’re always learning something new. One often overlooked element of this vital process, is the specific targeting of a certain search engine.
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Your preconceived notions of targeted digital marketing may omit these key features; why on earth would you want to utilise a certain search engine? Will this not restrict your online visibility? Would you achieve greater results from investing in software development Services, or focusing on a different aspect of digital marketing? Unfortunately, unlike the plethora of information surrounding SEO, search engine marketing, and the valued differences of each search engine are areas that are still experiencing development.
So which search engine should you target, and how should you go about targeting it? Well, this depends on the type and size of your business. If you’re an industry titan, or a very well-known firm, you’ll do just fine with standard SEO techniques and a focus on the big players, such as Bing, Yahoo and Google. Let’s briefly look at the specifics of each…
Undoubtedly, Google experiences the largest number of visitors of any search engine. The only reason to not specialise with the digital juggernauts would be if any criteria are better accommodated by other search engines, regardless of their inferior position to Google: Does a sizable percentage of your target audience utilise Bing or Yahoo? (These search engines have more female users, and more users who are middle-aged or older). Do similar, related products target other search engines? Can you utilise any external factors (such as peak trading periods) to enhance your search engine marketing efforts? If you answer positively to any of the above questions, then perhaps an alternate search engine may be the best option for your digital marketing campaign.
However, if you’re a newly-established firm, you might need to put in a bit more work to get the attention you deserve. Smaller sites can showcase somewhat unknown companies, but they also lack many of the benefits of their larger, more mainstream counterparts- Pay-per-click ads, SEO and other specifics of search engine marketing are far less important; presentation and the quality of your product are the paramount factors to focus on, not to say that you should ignore the other factors of SEM.
For example, if you’re an estate agent, you’ll need to establish yourself on sites such as Zoopla and Rightmove. Given that such search engines target industry specialists, rather than casual users, visitors will go that little bit further in order to find the right product. Regardless of how comprehensive or well-executed your digital marketing campaign is, a sub-standard product will hinder your progress massively. Hence, if you are a smaller business, put in the effort to affirm yourself on specialist sites recognised by your respective industry.
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