Web Design
California Web Design
In the Online Business, there’s a first time for everything, but it is not recommended to allow a novice to design a business website — even if he does it for free. Here’s why. Competent website design requires at a minimum:
1. Graphics software ability and an artistic sense. - Geeks can run graphics programs, but unless the geek has a trained artist’s eye, these graphics won’t look right — and neither you nor the geek may know the difference. You need to hire someone with graphic design experience. An alternative, if you must, is to use a pre-designed template included with build-it-yourself web tools, such as Site Build It! or Yahoo! Small Business Hosting. At least these templates will have been designed by a professional.
2. HTML ability. Lack of HTML knowledge isn’t usually the problem. You can find good website design tools, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage. With one of these tools, you don’t really need to know much actual HTML code. The design program creates the code for you. Yes, they tend to build websites that are a bit bloated, in terms of the amount of mark-up code used, but this isn’t usually the fatal flaw.
3. Navigation and usability design experience. Without such experience your designer is likely to produce a website that can’t expand beyond five or six webpages as your business grows and which will cause a poor visitor experience. Software is no substitute for experience, since there are no one-size-fits-all rules of thumb here. On the other hand, web design can be learned with practice. Build a first website for your own online business; you’ll learn a lot in the process.
4. Basic search engine optimization skills. Sadly, some website designers don’t have a clue how a site is found by the search engines. Before you contract with a website designer, make sure that she knows something about SEO. Your designer doesn’t need to be an SEO guru to understand and insert appropriate keywords in the title tag, description meta tag, headings, and body text. To learn more about SEO, click here.
5. Ability for the site owner to make changes. Many websites look beautiful but can’t be altered by the site owner. If all changes must go through the site designer that built it, they probably won’t be made in a timely manner. Two easy ways to fix this are: Have you site designer build your site within the structure of a site-building system with a web interface.
Yes, there are other important disciplines, such as installing an online contact form, setting up a shopping cart capability, JavaScript programs to improve the customer experience, etc. But the five above are very important.
We believe that a website can help you to be “visible”. We can help you to find the best solution to make your business known by internet users offering affordable rates. We can build your website with fast download time and reliable service. Through PHP Crew and our partners, you may find a full range of web services that will lead you to success in your internet business.
How to start?
Domain name
Find a domain name that you can brand or a functional that will help you with branding and also with basic principles of SEO.
Market research with your site
There are many ASP ,PHP or CGI applications in the market which you can use it in your site to identify markets.
Transparency
Tell shortly who you are, what you do and how you do. You can improve the reliability of your services, by telling how you offer your products and services. Many customers like transparency.
Improve navigation
Clear navigation can help your customers to visit all your pages without any blocking. Make some cross-linking to related pages, or related services as it appears in this site. Put a search on your web site, customers can search the information which they want.
Loading time
If you want to have a very fancy website, with all kinds of features, please consider the loading time. All visitors are not patient enough to wait for your pages, which takes minutes to get loaded. If a visitor finds you in a search, remember s/he may open more than one link from the search result in separate browser windows. If your pages are very dull in loading, he will not hesitate to close one window where your site appears slowly. So do not create a business site with huge graphics and animation. To help you with monitoring your website, we offer a monitoring service that can make you feel more relaxed.
Benefits, not just features
You can use the site to tell about your services, features as well as the benefits they get. Unlike conventional advertisements you can tell more about the benefits your customer gets through your services. Explain in detail but not with pages of words.
Promote your site
Your web site will be of no use to you if it is a secret! Put your web site address on everything. Your letterhead, envelopes, with your signature on emails, business cards, company vehicles. Get Traffic to your site. You can also use our featured service to promote your website.
Put a site analysis tool
Add a site analysis tool, which can help you to track and analyze the information about your visitor. This can help you to understand, who your visitors are, which page they like most, which country they visit from and much more. We also offer this service, check it out here
Improving things
If you need help in improving your web presence we can give you our hands, to turn your current website into a productive, attractive and profitable business tool. We can also provide a professional Web site evaluation and make suggestions for improvement. Contact us for further information and price quote.
For those who are not looking to outsource the creation of their websites, we also offer the Website Creator, which is an easy to use online tool that creates fantastic websites.
In case you are just looking for ideas and know how to design your own site (we can always help if needed), below you can find web templates of various themes and types. You may choose a design or search by categories.
