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Good web design and how it can help your business succeed

How do we measure web design success? What reporting is available for websites?

If you own a shop, you're aware of trends - maybe Friday evening is always busy in a fish & chip shop, as is Saturday lunchtime. You know how much you took on any given day, and how many fish you got through, but beyond that, the details of your success elude you. How many people looked at the menu on the pavement then walked away? How many people came in your shop but didn't buy? And for what reason? Which were your busiest tables? Who tried to find a seat but couldn't and went to the chippy up the road? How long did it take people to finish their fish supper and leave?

With the web and the web-tools we have available now you can find out all of that! Who came to your site, where they live, what time they visited, how long they spent on your site, which links they clicked on, how many pages they looked at, whether or not they bought anything, if they watched your video or downloaded your guide, if they read your opening spiel on your homepage and decided that your site wasn't for them.

The same applies for your campaigns. You can get any number of metrics to determine whether or not your promotion was a success, which parts of it were well received and which bits you can improve in order to make your campaign a resounding success next time.

Content Management Systems - what are they, and what is the difference between that and a flat HTML site?

If you are looking for a simple brochure style website, with few or no updates anticipated and little functionality, then your requirements are very different from a business who is looking to constantly update their eCommerce site from which they are going to conduct most of their business.

The two main categories of website are HTML/Flat brochure style, and content managed. The primary differentiator is that the owner/web editor/web manager can't update the former without prior website design/development experience and training. They are intended to be updated byt a professional web designer or developer who has to delve into code to make updates. This has a time and cost implication every time an update needs to be made. A flat HTML website will however be the cheaper option as they require less time and effort to set up. On the downside, they have limited capability for functionality.

A website with a content management system (CMS) on the other havnd however, costs more to build, but that cost will be offset by the fact that they are designed with the intention that the webmaster/owner/content manager will be making the updates, and in that case they are able to do it as and when they like, as often as they like, without a cost involved. CMS websites are typically suited to larger websites, that will be updated more frequently that their HTML counterparts.

A CMS site is built using a content management system framework (Wordpress for example), and is connected, via a programming language to a data source, such as an SQL database, where the large majority of the content is stored. CMS websites make use of language more complicated that HTML such as php or ASP.NET to allow for greater functionality and interaction.

What are the advantages of making use of a website to promote and market my business online?

One advantage of promoting and marketing your business by means of a website is that you can promptly and easily make updates to your online promotional material. Unlike print marketing and advertising you can come up with a new marketing initiative in a meeting at 9am, by lunchtime it can be live and you will know whether or not it's likely to be a success by the time you go home at half five, changing or updating your offering the next morning should you wish. You can also react to market forces or opportunities in the market, being among the first movers when an opportunity presents itself. Print advertising simply wouldn't allow you to do this, the lead times being significantly greater.

It also reduces the amount of time and money you spend on outdated campaigns. Once your offer changes or is no longer available, with a print campaign all of your posters and flyers that you've painstakingly had produced at great expense need to go in the bin, with great cost to you and a significant cost to the environment. With a website, you simply get in touch with your webmaser/web designer/website manager and they will quickly and cleanly make the change for you online, and you are ready to go with absolutely no waste. And should you have chosen to have a content managed website (CMS) it's even easier - you simply log in to your site and make the changes yourself.

What about good web design and Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization, or SEO is the process whereby you make your site as finely tuned as possible in order to ensure that Search Engines such as Google and Bing consider your website worthy enough to show ahead of all the competition.

This involves writing the content in such a way that it relates to the words (keywords) your potential customers will be searching to find whatever it is you're doing/selling/saying. It also entails making sure that all the key elements of what makes up a good website are there and put together properly. Titles, images, framework of your site, links - they all have to be right.

This also includes things you can't see - the invisible tags that sit behind your webpage, but that do an important job nonetheless. A good web designer will do all of this as a matter of course, but there's always room for improvement, especially as time marches on, and best-practice and guidelines change and what used to be the done thing is now frowned upon.

My content is the main reason people visit my site - why should I invest in getting my web design right?

The internet is so vast, and you more than likely have so much competition that potential customers can afford to be very selective, and will happily jump from site to site if they don't get instant gratification. The average time for an internet user spending on any page is just 11 seconds, so the opportunity for you to persuade them that your site is worth hanging around in is very limited. Eleven seconds isn'tsufficient time to convince them using copy alone that you're what they're looking for, especially since they're attempting to digest the entirety of your page in one go, and so you need to make the most of other devices at your disposal. This makes your design, and the visuals of your site absolutely vital to the sucess of your site.

Another study has shown that two thirds of internet users, when given their eleven seconds would much prefer to read content that is beautifully designed rather than content that is plain, hence the need to perfect your design along with your content, and another study suggests that around 40% of internet users will instantly navigate away from a page if the pictures are either broken or take too long to be revealed, highlighting the need for imagery to break up the monotony of your text. 38% of users also said that they will instantly disconnect from what a website is trying to communicate with them if the site is poorly designed.

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