What to Look for in a Website Designer

Putting a website together is not easy work. Not only do you have to make sure your content is appropriate, but you also have to pay attention to your site’s design. If both of these elements are not done properly, you risk losing potential visitors. For this reason, you may want to consider hiring a website designer. Through a website designer, your site gets put into the hands of a professional. This means that the process of getting your site up and running on the Web should be successful.

Yet, if you type “website designer” into a search engine, you will have to sift through over 7 million results! This can be really daunting, especially if you don’t know what the characteristics are behind a good website designer. However, with a little bit of common-sense analysis, you can easily determine which website designer is best for you. In fact, this analysis is so simple it can be summed up in three steps: looking at a designer’s portfolio, considering their years in business and finally, evaluating their SEO skills.

1. Looking at the Designer’s Portfolio
Good website designers will have extensive portfolios showcasing their work. In these portfolios, they give you various samples of their website designs. They may also include testimonials from former customers who were pleased with their services. Indeed, through a portfolio, you get a chance to see what a website designer can bring to the table.

2. Considering Their Years in Business
It’s important that a website designer has a few years of experience. This is not to say that newbies can’t give you what you need, but you won’t know for sure since they haven’t had a chance to establish themselves. Yet, if a designer has been in business for 10 years or more, you can be assured that they probably know what they’re doing.

3. Evaluating their SEO Skills
Website design is only part of the equation of site creation. You must also make sure your site is optimized for search engines. An proficient website designer can help in this area, assuming they have basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) skills. If they don’t you may want to look elsewhere, since SEO can not be ignored. If a website designer doesn’t optimize the website for you, then eventually you will have to do it on your own.

So, there you have it. With these three basic guidelines, you should have a better chance of finding a good website designer. In fact, you can make your research even quicker if you look companies with good referrals. Again, make sure that they also have good SEO skills, as you will need traffic to your website. So, what are you waiting for… go on and use your new found knowledge and make the effort of redesigning your company website easier!

Give Your Website Pizzazz with Flash Animation

When Flash was introduced in 1996, the face of the Internet changed completely. With Flash animations, webmasters were able to create websites that were more impressive to visitors. Why? Well, when a user goes to a website with Flash, they are seeing something much more elaborate than an animated GIF. The colors are more brilliant and the graphics are clearer. Additionally, Flash animations take up less space than videos.

However, creating Flash animations is not an easy process. Unless you’re a graphic artist, you might be limited in what you can design. And even then you have to learn how to use the software… a process that may take a few months. Indeed, mastering the creation of Flash animations is not an overnight process.

There’s also the issue of creativity. Just like writing, Flash animation requires a lot of artistic ability. A website with poorly designed Flash animations can result in visitors leaving quickly. They may believe that the amateur Flash animations must point to an amateur site… one that they don’t feel comfortable doing business with.

You can avoid these problems if you get a Web designer to handle your Flash animations. They can create professional Flash animations quickly and easily, saving you a lot of time. Additionally, if you need more work done, Web designers can help you create your site from the ground up. Work with a company that has years of experience creating a plethora of high-quality Flash animations.

Cartoon Network Brands with Older Market

I will tell you upfront that I love old cartoons. Tom & Jerry, Road Runner, even The Flintstones. Cartoons of the past told simple stories and used a lot of slap-stick routines. The Cartoon Network has created a series of commercials that blend a variety of cartoons together from the past and present. Even your kids might appreciate the comparisons.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

This commercial is a blend of two characters from the same era but different production houses: Tom and Speedy.

Cartoon Network New Brand Indentity

I will tell you upfront that I love old cartoons. Tom & Jerry, Road Runner, even The Flintstones. Cartoons of the past told simple stories and used a lot of slap-stick routines. The Cartoon Network has created a series of commercials that blend a variety of cartoons together from the past and present. Even your kids might appreciate the comparisons.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

This commercial is a blend of Dexter and Road Runner.

1,001 Ways to Improve Your Website #989

Be design curious.
The pace of innovation of new and exciting features for all websites has accelerated. More information is available about website design and functionality on the Internet than ever before. And search engines such as Google and Yahoo are improving so that finding exactly what you’re looking for is becoming easier. We know that information is basically free, but many applications that can improve your website are free as well.

Utilize RSS feeds to subscribe to Blogs such as the Marcy Design Blog can help you keep pace with the rapid flow of new ideas. Constantly review other websites to analyse functionality and see if it would work on your website. Contact professional website designers to review your website for effectiveness. Your website, like your business, can always be improved.

Smashing Design

Smashing Magazine has put together a list of cool product designs. Some of the products are in the conceptual phase. but all of them are very interesting. When you’re thinking about designing your website, look to the real world to find innovative solutions. The featured designs range from flexible mobile phones that you can wear on your wrist (I want one!) to modern rocking chairs. Smashing Magazine has other lists of innovative and creative designs within their blog as well. Another section titled: ‘User Experience of the Future’ is also a great resource.

1,001 Ways to Improve Your Website #990

We live in a world of constant change. Today, it’s possible to create a website that handles a large portion of your business marketing. So start thinking about your website as the primary source for all of your marketing. Make sure that all of your printed marketing materials have your website address listed. Direct all of your clients and prospects to your website. Give them a reason to come back by making your website a valuable resource.

Before today the theme of this article was; 1,001 Ways to Improve Your Business. However, I feel that the Internet is so important that you can no longer separate your business from your website. The two are tied together. And since the next hundred articles or so from this blog will deal exclusively with website marketing, the new title seems more appropriate.

Keeping the User in Mind: Another Reason to Hire a Professional Web Designer

These days most businesses need a professional website in order to be taken seriously. Many potential clients will form their initial opinion on a companies business based on the appearance of the company website. For this reason many businesses concentrate on having a flashy, highly professional, website designed and quickly forget about the user. One way to avoid the trap of forgetting the users while still getting a professional presence is to hire a professional web designer.

While many business owners might feel comfortable with building their own website many novice designers will get so caught up in making sure the site they are making looks professional that they forget to make it user friendly. While you might be proud of the fancy, flash, entrance page you were able to create it might cause problems for some users. A website surfer who is using dial up or has an older computer that is compatible with some versions of flash might be unable to get the website to load. This means they will eventually leave the site without seeing the fancy entrance or the products and services that your company is promoting. One way to avoid too much flash and to preserve usability is to hire a website designer.

A good website designer will be able to provide an honest outside opinion that your company needs. If your company has an existing website a professional designer will be able to look over the design and tell you what needs to be changed. Most designers that have built business websites have an idea of what the businesses customers are going to want to see and what designs have helped their clients succeed. A professional web designer will be able to test the finished product in a variety of web browsers and point out problems and flaws that the average business owner might not have ever considered. Even if the business hiring the web site designer is inclined to be stubborn price will often influence their final decision and help keep the site useable.

The price of most web design prices is determined by its complexity. Some designers charge by the hour and a website that is going to require a long time to design will cost a great deal of money. Meanwhile, a website design that is fairly simple will usually require much less time and be far more affordable. This alone will often help keep a business site easier for the user to access and utilize.

Quite a few business owners who have hired a website designer to create a website that was crammed with bells and whistles have been forced to rethink things after getting an initial quote. In many cases budget constraints have forced business owners to choose what features are absolutely necessary to provide website viewers with the information they need. Without realizing it many business owners have ended up with extremely usable websites for no other reason than their web design budget was tight.

Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission

Website design is important for government websites as well. The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission has created a new website to promote their services. Flash animation was used to enhance the website. For a website this large, it is well organized and easy to navigate.

Search Engine Marketing - Keyword Selection And Placement Tips

A big part of successful search engine marketing is search engine placement (where your web page fall in the search engine results). Keyword selection and placement is a major factor in on page. Search engine optimization and search engine marketing but whenever new businesses are trying to get their web page noticed and show up higher in the search engine results pages they often focus just on what there site looks like instead of also utilizing SEO strategies help get there web site to come up in the search engines. Here is one easy ways that you can improve your search engine placement results to increase your web page traffic and your sales.

Keyword selection is very important so choose carefully. Keywords are the driving force behind successful search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Your search engine ranking and ultimately how many people read your website depend on the keywords or key phrases that you choose. So pick carefully. When you’re trying to decide what keyword or key phrase to focus your search engine optimization on you should start with the most basic search term that a person would be likely to use when trying to find a web page about your product or service. So for example if you are selling refrigerator magnets on your website when it’s time to pick the keywords that you want to use for search engine marketing what are the first words that come into your mind? Did you think of words like “kitchen refrigerator magnets” or “funny refrigerator magnets” or even “cartoon refrigerator magnets”? Use those words as your primary keywords because chances are good that if those were the first words that you thought of in relation to your product those will be the first words that other people think of when they are searching for your product. When you are choosing keywords for your search engine marketing campaign always use more than one word. If you only have one keyword then you will get ranked very low on the search engine results page because the search engine spiders will have millions of webpage in their indexes that have that word somewhere in the page. The more specific you can make the keywords or key phrase the more likely it is that your search engine marketing and search engine optimization efforts will pay off and bring in customers that are looking for exactly the product that you are selling.

Make sure that you position your keywords carefully. Using your keywords spread through the page. I suggest using your main keyword phrase in your first and last paragraph of your content. And don’t forget to us them in the headings and in the hidden html meta tags on the page especially the “title tag”. It will make it more likely that the search engine spiders will rank your web page higher than other pages that might have some of the same content but don’t have those keywords or key phrases placed properly on the web page.

Search engine marketing is great because it delivers people who are actively searching for what you have. Unless you employ some search engine optimization strategies like keyword placement, your site may never be found by those who desperately need what you have.

Terry Stanfield is a SEM consultant with over 15 years of sales and marketing experience. Before you do anything go to Terry’s site for information on Search Engine Marketing and related info about Search Engine Optimization. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Terry_Stanfield

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