Coaching For Success
Posts tagged web design
Users Favour Web Site Speed Over Functionality
Sep 17th
A recent report indicates that, despite the importance people place on internet business website offerings and functionality (such as ease of navigation, streaming video, etc.), users put a premium on website speed. All of which means that the time it takes a web site to load is still critical, and that speed must still be a primary consideration for developers when it comes to web development and building, launching and modifying web sites.
Revealing Facts
Here are some of the interesting facts the report uncovered:
- More than a third of users rate speed over functionality, with only about 20 percent favouring functionality over speed
- 84 percent of users give up on poorly performing sites after only a few tries
- A site that is slow will be abandoned within 5 seconds by one third of users
Faster Mobile Access
Mobile speed’s an important consideration also:
- Mobile users accessing mobile sites account for a third of web users
- Mobile users’ expectations are high regarding internet access on their mobile device, with over half looking to web sites to load just as fast, almost as fast or faster on their mobile devices than their computers
Poor Performance Won’t Do
Surprisingly, slow load times and poor performance are not unusual, leaving users feeling frustrated:
- Over a third of users stated they would avoid a slow web site in future, with more than a quarter being likely to switch to a competitor’s site
- Two thirds come across a poorly performing web site several times a week
- When it comes to mobile internet usage, the top 2 issues are formatting, which oftentimes does not translate well to mobile devices, and very slow loading
Tasks Left Incomplete
Many users complain about the fact they’re unable to complete certain tasks on some web sites:
- Over the preceding 3 months, almost half of users had given up on sites where they were left hanging
- Over 80 percent weren’t able to complete specific tasks, such as a purchase or a registration, when visiting a particular web site at least once
What Does All This Mean?
It appears that users’ loyalty and patience evaporate pretty quickly where poor performing web sites are concerned. And the sad fact is that a lot of companies are either unaware of or choose to ignore the fact that, when it comes to users’ time spent online, seconds really do count. Spoiled by the lightning-fast speeds of the best-on-the-web sites such as Yahoo, Facebook and Google, users expect all sites to at least come close to that type of speed.
So, what does this mean for your internet business site? According to this report, it means that users are obviously demanding and expecting their web experience to be as seamless as possible, so, when considering web development and designing your web site, or looking at the performance of your current site, you need to bear in mind that seconds on the web are the equivalent of hours in real life, and that whether a visitor becomes a customer or just another lost prospect can be decided in only a few seconds.
So, try making your landing page as simple as possible so that it loads quickly and encourages visitors to stick around and delve deeper into your site, where more complex functionality can be added that may be slower to load. But, by that time, your visitor may be intrigued enough to not be put off, as long as we’re only talking about a few more seconds load time and not minutes. If it’s minutes, we got problems!
And then there’s the challenge of getting a site to perform adequately in the mobile world. The internet experience on a mobile device will, by nature, be slower than on a computer due mainly to the relative processing power of a mobile device, which means you’ve already got your back to the wall where mobile’s concerned. As mentioned earlier, mobile users expect web pages to load at least as quickly as on their computers.
So, a major consideration in designing your web site and its pages should be mobile users. Many companies are now providing a completely separate web site for their mobile users to take advantage of mobile marketing, a site specifically designed and built to load quickly and efficiently on a mobile device with functionality stripped to a minimum in the interests of user satisfaction.
The number of users turning to their mobile devices for all their online tasks is increasing rapidly and shows no signs of abating, so the sooner you take a serious look at your internet business and web development with a view to optimal mobile performance, the better. Consider yourself warned.
Professional Web Development – What Is It?
Aug 27th
You’ve decided to take the plunge and get your company or business on the internet, so now what? Well, “now what” is getting a web site designed and developed, preferably by a professional web development company. But, we’re not talking about just any old web site here; we’re talking about a web site that looks and feels professional and that is designed and built to achieve your short and long term marketing and business goals.
Laying The Foundation
Professional web development, when conducted and executed correctly, is a process, not a one-off event. To that end, the first thing that needs to be done is to determine the goals and objectives, both short-term and long-term, of your business, whether that be in the area of e-commerce, online lead generation, etc. Knowing and understanding your business goals combined with a professional approach are the key ingredients needed to help establish a strategy to ensure online success.
Once a strategy has been established, the rest of the pieces of the web development puzzle (systems, applications, marketing, content and technologies) can be put together to reach the previously established goals. Having no goals makes the whole process much less professional (how do you know where you’re going if you’ve got no target to aim for?), and makes such things as feasibility, ROI (return on investment) and Cost-benefit analysis pretty much pointless.
It’s essential to know the goals of any internet business endeavour in order to be able to map out a web development plan from start to finish, from the online marketing means and methods to the applications essential to the project’s success.
Web Development Cycle
The primary goal of any web development project, however, is to get traffic to the site, since, without visitors, nothing else really matters. You can have the greatest, snazziest web site imaginable, but, without traffic, it may as well be a blank screen. Therefore, a major component of any web development project must be a marketing methodology, which is, sadly, ignored in the launching of many online ventures, but should be tightly intertwined with web development to ensure the success of your online business.
Begin With The End In Mind
The one who ultimately determines the success, or otherwise, of your investment in professional web development and, more importantly, your online business success, is the end user, or customer. So, knowing who your customer is and what their needs are is vital, which necessitates extensive research and analysis, so that your web site is set up to anticipate your customer’s needs and, crucially, to speak the language they understand, making them feel comfortable and maintaining their interest.
Establishing and maintaining relationships with your customers is essential to your long-term online success, and this can only be achieved by reaching the highest visibility possible and providing your customers with the most powerful and user-friendly site available in your particular niche or industry. Having content on your site that keeps visitors coming back for more has always been and continues to be one of the basic essentials of web site success.
Applications Specific To Your Business Needs
That having been said, while content is still king on the internet, the function of a business web site has evolved into more than just an information delivery platform to include web based services specific to their customer base. A good internet business web site should, as a bare minimum, provide services commonly used in that particular industry. But, in order to stand out from the crowd, a truly superior web site should go one step further and offer new and innovative services to make the site the most useful in that field.
Which applications are applicable to your site will depend on the type of business involved and the needs of your customers. The applications needed can vary widely, but their functionality should be driven by your customers’ expectations and should integrate seamlessly with the overall web development strategy established previously.
Content Is Still King
A web site with many high quality pages of relevant content is still looked on very favourably by search engines, so constantly updating a web site with quality, relevant content is vital to maintaining visibility with the search engines. However, the source of such content has changed from the company to the end user, with most web sites now providing the capability for their customers to not only add to, but, in many cases, dictate the direction of new content being added to a web site through the use of a content management system (CMS).
Expandability And Flexibility
As mentioned earlier, professional web development is an on-going process and not a static event, so any company providing such services should not only actively seek the input and contributions of the major stakeholders in the project, but allow enough flexibility in the web development plans and strategy to ensure that the system is expandable to permit ease of addition to and modification of the web site not only in the near term but in the long term.
Business needs and requirements are a constantly moving target, so any web presence established should be flexible enough to be altered, revised or modified as the needs of the business and customer change, whether this is performed by the web development, or in-house by members of staff of the business enterprise itself, an option which should be made available to your business.
Professional web development is an essential part of any serious online business endeavour, and, as such, should be regarded as a major investment in both time and money. It’s an ever-evolving, on-going process that, if done correctly, can mean the difference between success and failure for your online enterprise, so making the right decisions in this area is vital to your future success. Hopefully, armed with the information presented here, you’ll be in a position to select the right company to take your business to the levels of success you desire.
Good luck and Happy Web Developing!
Website Improvement Tips Before Getting Listed in Search Engines
Jul 17th
Search engines like Google and Yahoo have algorithms that can detect your website automatically and all you need to do is create a website with good content that is friendly to their software in order for them to index your site. Google uses a ‘spider’ to crawl the web on a regular basis and add sites to its index. This article presents some basics which can help you to develop a search engine friendly website so that you can get some free promotion.
‘Basics of creating the webpage’
A website must be designed in such a way that it can be crawled or navigated easily. For that you must enable easy navigation through different pages and links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link present on the homepage. The content on different sub-pages must be logically connected and external links, if any, may be provided for reference content. The content of the page must be relevant to your users and should provide useful and unique information to them. That way they will be interested to re-visit the website. SEO tools must be used for keyword enrichment which helps in getting better ranks in search results.
‘Tips to make page more effective’
Apart from above mentioned guidelines, there are useful tricks that can be used to make pages more effective. You must always make use of title tags by giving the most precise objective of your website you can. Also, the meta-tag must provide an exhaustive description so that users can have a snapshot of the content at a glance of search engine result returned. As far as important parts of content are concerned, like important names or links; they must be in the orm of text rather than images as most search engines do not search through images. A good tip to help get better ranking is to have a number of backlinks on relevant external WebPages, which will aid your SEO. The backlinks also create more visibility on different websites.
‘Quality guidelines’
Almost all search engines specify their own quality checklists. If you are aiming for a particular search engine then you can go through their quality documents. Some general points can be cited here. Check for common malpractices and misbehaviour on these quality documents and make sure you avoid these mistakes at all costs.
The basic rule is to make your pages keeping in mind the users’ requirements and not the search engines requirements, which means you try to ensure you present the same content to search engines as you present to your users. By not following this rule you are doing what is referred to as ‘cloaking’. The content of the page should always add value to the visitors and it should be unique. Then and only then you can get quality visitors after they have come to your page through search results.
If there are subpages, then please avoid duplicacy of the content. Keyword enrichment is good but the content must not be overloaded with keywords only. Backlinks are great SEO tools but you should never have backlinks on spammers and offensive websites.
‘Final steps- submitting your website and follow up’
Always refer to the guidelines published by various search engines to submit your website. Apart from the formalities to be performed before submission, which are specific to each search engines, some extra features can be attached to the website.
You can use a sitemap for your website, which is nothing but a file containing the links of all WebPages in your site, in a format which is recognised by search engines. This will make sure that all pages are covered by search engine. There are categories specified by search engines based on the content of the websites. Make sure you submit the website in the correct categories.
Remember, search engines are just a platform for website promotion but it is you who has to put effort in to ensure the consistency and the popularity of your website. Regular monitoring of traffic on your website as well as competitor websites is a must. You must always keep the content updated. With simple efforts you can generate very good results.
‘Tips on Creating a Successful Website’
Jul 15th
Designing Your Website For Success
Online promotion is a great way of marketing, it has come to the aid of many new businesses as well as existing firms. All of them appreciate and try to explore the potential of online promotion. Building your own website is considered as a starting point for any online promotional strategy for a business. Here are a few basic rules which may help you to build a more successful website.
‘The basic webpage characteristics’
No one actually cares about selecting a domain name, but its selection is equally important. You must use a domain name that is short, simple and relevant to your business. Remember, your domain name is your brand identity on the internet, better make it effective. The next step is to decide the look and feel of the website. It includes selecting the colours, the tags, the buttons and the links. The look and feel of a website must be a good user interface which provides easy access to the information and the means to perform various actions. There are online tools available to do this task, so make use of them.
‘The content’
The content should be prepared in such a manner that the reader remains interested throughout while glancing through; right from the title to the conclusion. The related stuff must be grouped together. For example, you can address questions or issues in an FAQ section. Apart from that, the content must focus on identifying and solving a problem that clients are facing, so that the right customers can relate themselves with your offering. Tools like audio and visuals help in making interaction easier. Hence, once you get a prospect interested in your content, it is a start of your long term relationship. Also, don’t forget to follow SEO techniques which popularise your website.
‘The business part’
Once you develop content as per your plan, the next step is to get the customer to purchase your product. You must include the price structure of various offerings you have. The pricing must be competitive and customers must feel that your product or service offers value for their money. Giving discounts is never advisable as it depreciates your worth, so start low and move to higher price band. In order to add value to your proposition, you can club more than one product/services in a single package and use this leverage to delight your customers. And finally, you can provide online order facility to facilitate easy purchases.
‘Building a relationship’
Once a customer makes a purchase through your website, you need to build a relationship with them. You must follow-up to ensure a long relationship develops. The customers must be constantly asked for their feedback and if they wish to give any testimonials about the company, products or services. And while doing all this, keep updating your customer database for future offers and promotions. You should facilitate easy interaction with customers through websites by providing features like autoresponders, online customer service or through regular offers such as newsletters and email.
‘Choosing a website within your budget’
There are numerous options available when it comes to getting a website. Low budget options are – a ‘business card’ types with your company’s product information with contact details; ‘brochure’ type with detailed offerings and free sites using templates. This options give an initial foot in the market but may not necessary be seen as very professional or trustworth. The best options are Content Management Systems (CMS) which require little technical knowledge but allows you to update your site easily and regularly yourself.
All you need to promote your business through a website is to choose an option that is easy for you and produce content useful to your customers’ needs. This simple rule will go a long way in building a large client base for your business.
Just How Important Is it to Keep the ‘B’ Word in Mind When Designing a Website for Your Business?
Jul 8th
Negotiating The Business Maze to Success
Branding is something we commonly associate with big multinationals. Pepsi, Nike, Coca Cola, McDonald’s and other companies use branding effectively to spread their business worldwide. But how can branding benefit a small Internet business? In an Internet business, barriers to entry are low and everybody can start a business. Under these circumstances, branding becomes a necessity. Here is how to do it.
Find Your Voice
When you design a website for your business, it is tempting to look at what others are doing and act the same. After all, that will instantly make you look professional. But if you are too similar to others, you will also be bland and uninteresting. That is why you should think of a way to stand out. Create a unique voice or a unique point of view that will send a clear message that you are a master of your area of expertise. Look how Gary Vaynerchuk created a personal brand with his WineLibrary.tv website.
Create a Unique Visual Identity
Your visual identity should go with your voice. Create a logo and design your website so it stands out and complements the way you express your ideas (hire an Internet business coach if you need help). Having a recognizable visual identity will help you because people remember images better than words.
Spread the Word
Having a successful Internet business is all about making connections. We live in the era of social media, which gives a huge advantage to smart entrepreneurs who create a personal brand. Use Twitter and Facebook to get to know people. Befriend both industry leaders and potential customers, present a unique spin on your area and, with time, you will be recognized as an authority.
Branding is not a cure-all. But in a world increasingly cluttered with advertising and “me-too” businesses, it is an excellent way of standing out and making your Internet business profitable.
