Improve Your Website With Design
Lesson 1 – Design: Review Your Website
This article is an excerpt from “The Small Business Guide To Search Engine Marketing.”
The best way to improve your site design is by having someone other than yourself to review your website by visiting it, navigating through the pages and reading the content on the site. It may be a good idea to watch a user as they go through your site and take notes on how they use the site. Pay particular attention to where their eyes are drawn and where they click. Do this observation in silence. Try to use actual customers and then get the responses from friends and family. Friends and family are very supportive in many cases and you may or may not get all the information you need for improving your website.
How To Improve Your Website Design
Website Design is more than just the look and feel of a site. It is how text, graphics, and content are displayed on the page for maximum efficiency.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What is the goal of your website?
- What do you want people to do when they come to your web site?
- Does your current site accomplish this? Your artistic design – from colors, layout, scheme, written text and functionality should all work together to communicate your message.
- What is best communicated as written text vs. what can be communicated by design? This is where planning your marketing strategy in the beginning should be incorporated into your site design
A Small Business Guide To Search Engine Marketing
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Your design should be consistent throughout the site. (Headings, font, colors, etc.)
Further, every design element must answer the question, “Why?” Why was this design element used? Why are these colors used? Why is this font used? I typically don’t like to create a site for a customer unless they’ve been educated about the process. Educating the customer makes my job easier and it helps them to get better results.
You may be told that you need a certain style banner, headline or another element that will create your desired response. If you don’t plan for this in advance, you may accrue additional design charges to have these changes made.
Having your marketing strategy in place can save you the cost of redesign later when you are ready to implement your Internet Marketing strategy.
Finally, you want to create a web site that your audience will like. It does not matter what you like. You are in business for your customers. Who are you talking to? What language do you use? What is your audience used to seeing?