Posts Tagged web design
Does Your Small Business Need a Website? – Seattle Web Design Tips
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing, Web Design and Development on April 28, 2015
The first servers powering the web may not have been switched on until 1991, but in that time, it has expanded at a rate so exponential that it’s expansion could be said to be unprecedented. The technology, which was initially created to allow access to data from anywhere, has become such a common part of everyday life, that most of those born in the 90s quite simply cannot imagine a world without it. With over 640 million active websites on the web, it’s hard to imagine that there are businesses who don’t have one. However, with 27.9 small businesses in the U.S. and over 217,000 in Washington alone, there are literally millions of businesses that have not yet made it onto the web.
While it is an undeniable fact that a web presence can greatly benefit a business of any size, and the dot com is undeniably the gold standard for establishing your brand on the web, there are other options.
The Size Of Your Business
One important consideration is that many businesses are actually very small businesses. Very small business owners often bring home between $20,000 and $120,000 per year in gross profit depending on their business. Small businesses, which can make upwards of $1 million per year, can typically afford a website without any problems, but for very small businesses who use most of their income for living expenses, renovations and small personal luxuries, the often high costs of a website are not always an option.
Social Pages vs. Web Pages
Social pages are quickly replacing websites as the first place that customers visit. While anyone searching for a keyword or business type on Google, Bing, or Yahoo will most definitely find your website first, they can also reach your Google Plus page if it is properly optimized, your YouTube page, or even your Facebook page, depending on how you write your About description. Because services like Google Local allows you to put yourself on the map (literally) in search, web pages are becoming less and less necessary for simply telling people about your business. In fact, a busy social page with visible reviews, visible consumer interaction and fresh posts will leave the average consumer more convinced of the quality of your small business than most websites.
What You’re Selling
The last and most deciding factor for choosing whether to go with a website or a social page is your business. Depending on what you are selling, what you want to use the website for and what information you want to display, a website may or may not be right for you. For example, if you have a restaurant and you want an interactive menu, online booking and live chat, then you definitely need a website. If you have an auto-shop and you just want to let people know where you are and when you’re open, it’s significantly less necessary.
While statistically, more than 140,000 websites are launched per day, the truth is that with social media, the days of one page websites and web pages are virtually over. Not everyone needs a website when they can establish a web presence just as effectively, and without the hassle, using social media. Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a website, it just means you might not actually need one.
If you want to know more, contact Rory Martin for a consultation.
Seattle Web Design – Should I Use a Custom Theme?
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on March 17, 2015
If you’re using a CMS that supports themes, then one of your first questions is probably whether or not you need a unique, custom theme, or if you can get away with purchasing an existing one, or even using a free-to-use theme. The answer to the latter is, probably not, there will be thousands of websites with that theme, which is a definite disadvantage for making your website stand out on the web. The answer to the second is that it depends, and you may want to consider your options. The following help from Seattle web design experts should help you decide if you need a custom theme or not.
Why Use a Custom Theme?
A custom theme is advantageous for a number of reasons, especially if you’re just one of a number of similar Seattle businesses. Whether you use Joomla, Drupal, WordPress or one of another of the countless available CMS systems available, you can likely download a number of free and cheap themes that allow you to easily set up and get your business running. Unfortunately, that’s the problem. The cheaper and easier they are, the more businesses who will use them. Over time, consumers may become confused by seeing the same websites with different brand names, which generally reduces the impact of your branding and consumer messages.
It also affects your SEO, because most web based algorithms track uniqueness. When you have a website theme, none of your code is unique because other people, and potentially thousands of other websites are using it. When you have a custom theme, you won’t have any of these problems.
However, custom themes cost more, take longer to get up, and might delay your website launch if you’re planning it quickly. While custom themes have a lot of advantages for branding and some advantages for SEO, they might not be the best choice right away if you plan on launching your site immediately. However, you can plan to launch immediately with an available theme and plan a re-launch with a custom option for a few months or a year down the road.
What is Your Web Traffic and Web Based Revenue?
A custom theme typically costs upwards of $500, and many more than twice or three times that depending on the size, complexity and required features. Depending on how much money your website is going to generate, a custom theme might not be a good business decision, especially not if you own a small business. If you mostly want a one to five page website so that your customers have somewhere to go if they look you up on the web, then a custom theme might set you back a great deal of money when you would be better off investing it in advertising to boost your online sales. However, if you’re already making a great deal of money off of your website, or have the potential to, then a custom theme can be part of your marketing plan, because it is good business sense for branding, custom advertising, and standing out from the competition.
Want a quote? Contact Rory Martin’s Seattle web design team at 206-402-6347 for a consultation.
Seattle Web Design – Redesigning Your Website
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on February 17, 2015
If you’re ready to redesign your website, then you’re probably wondering about the steps and processes that go into it. While a lot of what goes into redesigning is decision making on your part, the following include the steps taken by Seattle web design teams when reorganizing, revamping, and redesigning websites.
Kickoffs and Meetings
The first step to redesigning your website is talking over your needs, ideas, and dislikes with your team. They will make suggestions, you will make suggestions, and both parties will walk away with a clearer idea of what you actually want. This is one of the most important reasons to hire a local Seattle web designer, because you can actually get together and talk to them, instead of trying to communicate your ideas over the web.
Structuring Content
After writing up ideas, a web design team will begin structuring content to create a mockup of the new design. Structuring is the planning of where photos, call to actions, slogans, and web content fit onto the site. It is an important part of the process because it allows both the web design team and the editorial team to work together to create something. Once your team has structured content, both teams can go to work, even if you’ve hired them separately.
Web Design
Most of the time, when you redesign your website, you get completely new web content. This is logical because it’s usually easier to start from scratch or with new ideas than to drastically change and existing website. If you’re using a theme or preexisting CMS with a custom theme, then your new web design should be finished fairly quickly, but usually you do get to see mockups first to ensure that you like the ideas.
Content Editing
If you want entirely new web content, then part of the web design is usually just that, although not all web designers offer copywriting. If you want the content to be tweaked, re-arranged, or improved, that is also an option, although it depends a great deal on you. Web content usually takes considerably less time than web design, meaning that you can have it back to approve well in advance of the website going back online. Most of the time, if you’re paying for new web design, you will want new content as well, or at least reorganized content so that it fits your new website better, suits the voice better, and if there are any errors, they are fixed.
Graphics and Artwork
If you haven’t chosen the graphics and artwork for your website, then your web design team can handle that too. In some cases, you may want custom imagery, in which case you need a photographer to come in and take quality photos. Otherwise, stock imagery will be purchased and used to brighten up the website.
If you wan to know more about redesigning websites, you can contact the Rory Martin Seattle web design team, for a consultation to ask about your site, or go ahead and make the hire to start with your kickoff meeting.
Why You Should Hold a Kickoff Meeting With Your Seattle Web Development Team
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on January 6, 2015
Whether you’re hiring your first web development team or hiring someone to make small updates to your existent content, they will probably offer you a kickoff meeting (if they don’t, go find another developer). While it may seem like a waste of your time to get together and have a meeting with your web developer, after all, some people hire international rather than local Seattle web developers, there are a couple of pretty convincing reasons why you should take them up on the offer and attend the meeting.
What is a Kickoff Meeting
A kickoff meeting is exactly what it sounds like, it’s a meeting where you go over initial design ideas, tell your web developers what you want, and if you’re lucky, they will show you any preliminary ideas. This sort of meeting can be done over the web if you’re short on time, but you can also show up to get to meet your designers, and they can meet you to get a better feel for who you are and what you might want. Some developers will want to host the meeting in your place of business so that they can get an idea of what your business is like as well, which is helpful when creating a design.
What Should You Discuss with Your Web Designers
A great kickoff meeting will allow you to discuss your needs, desires, and requirements for the product. In return, web designers will discuss product viability, feasibility, budget, time constraints, and any preliminary options for the site. You’ll cover topics like your brand, your core products, your product purpose, and most importantly, getting everyone involved to submit ideas, suggestions, and other information which might be helpful for creating a finalized idea of what you want your website to be.
Preparing for your Kickoff Meeting
While your web developer should do most of the prep work for the kickoff meeting, you can make sure that you are prepared by bringing along ideas of what you want your site to look like, lists of requirements, timelines, and items such as crucial elements of your website. If you have a separate web designer, then you’ll want to bring them along to the kickoff meeting as well so that they can work with the developer, but most development teams include design in the package.
Other than that, you really just have to set up a time and a place, and then start talking to your web developers about what you want and need in a site. From there, they can decide which direction you want to go, get a better idea of the feel of your company, and choose an appropriate direction, so that you get a website you truly love. A good kickoff meeting sets the stage for a whole project, and the ability to hold them is actually one of the reasons why you should choose a local Seattle web development team, rather than choosing one in Austin, Texas.
Want to know more? Contact Rory Martin to discuss your web development needs.
Seattle Web Design Tips: How to Tell Your Designer What You Really Want
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on November 11, 2014
Seattle Web Design Tips: How to Tell Your Designer What You Really Want
Communication between website owner and website designer has always been more than a little hazy, with the former often knowing what they want in theory without really knowing how to put that across in firm physical descriptions to designers. Most of the time “I want it to pop more” or “it should remind me of Pistachio ice cream” just isn’t going to cut it, unless you add more background information. Because even the best web designer can’t see your image, their idea of this thing could be something completely different then yours. So, here are a few of the best ways that Seattle web designers agree you can use to get across what you really want.
Make Sure They Know Your Business
If you hire a great Seattle web designer then the first thing they’re going to do is familiarize themselves with you and your business. If they haven’t and you’re not yet ready to switch designers, make sure you tell them about your ideals, business meaning, and anything else that they can use to recreate the feel of ‘who you are’ onto a website. Business branding requires personality, and you want to make sure that the web designer knows yours.
Share Concepts That You Like
If you take the time and go over a few websites or portfolio pieces with the web designer to let them know which styles and themes you like and do not like, you stand a better chance of getting something that you love. While not every web designer wants to sit down and discuss their portfolio with you, it will definitely make sure that they go into creating the design with a good idea of which pieces you like.
Create Reasons For Changes
When you ask for changes try going into detail as to why. If you’re not familiar with graphic design or terminology, that’s okay, just use normal language and say why you want it to look different in your language. For example, rather than saying “it should pop more” say “I think that some of the colors should be brighter, I want it to stand out a little bit more, and grab attention”, and then explain why. Discussing your needs with your Seattle web designer allows them to do their job.
Discuss What You Want
If you don’t know what you want, then you probably want to either sit down and talk it out with the designer, or work it out before finding a designer. Unfortunately, you can waste a lot of time and money looking for the perfect website if you don’t yet know what that website is. So, get a good idea of what it is you want from your website, and then after a discussion with a designer or developer, get into the web project knowing exactly what you want. This ensures that you get what you want, and you won’t have to do multiple revisions or eventually completely scrap the project.
Hiring a Seattle web designer is a big deal but by communicating openly, sharing ideas, and making sure everyone is on the same page, you can ensure that you get a website you love.
Seattle Web Design – Top Features for Business Websites
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on October 21, 2014
If you’re about to set up a website for your business for the first time then you really want to start considering the features and options you want on the website. While you can discuss your needs and any good local web design team will be able to tell you what you need, it’s also a good idea to decide what you want and why before you go. Here are a few of the things that Seattle web designers agree are the best features for business websites.
Great UX
UX is probably the most important thing to integrate into your web design. UX or User Experience refers to design that specifically makes it easy for users to visit and navigate your site. This means clean design, simple menus, and easy navigation. While it may mean skipping some of the bells and whistles, it does mean a better site.
Contact Information
If you want to look professional to local visitors then you want as much contact information available on the site as possible. The best way to go is to put some information in the header or footer and create a dedicated page with everything visitors need to get in touch.
Integrated Social Media
Visitors want to see that you’re an established business and the easiest way to show them that is to link in your social profiles. Showing a Facebook profile or Google Plus followers is the easiest way to convince modern web users that your site is established and trustworthy. Because many online shoppers actually research using social, many will actually click through to your business page and perhaps even like the page, which makes your social marketing that much easier.
Graphics
The web is quickly becoming a very graphic driven place, and using graphics on your website creates a modern look. While you might be prepared to put up a few pictures of your products and perhaps a few stock photos, you should also consider creating graphic centric pages that center around an image. This makes your website cleaner, more modern, and simpler for viewers.
Mobile Ready
Whether you choose to go mobile friendly with a specific mobile website or with a responsive design, you need mobile friendly. An study showed that some 40% of Seattle smartphone owners use their phones to research businesses and products before shopping, even when out shopping, meaning that if your site is not mobile friendly, you could loose customers.
As a business, you want a website that is simple, easy to use, and informative. If you’re operating a web shop, you also want to make sure that your site is secure, offers secure protocol protection, and that it loads quickly enough to allow users to access and research products from their phones. Other than that, most of your services and pages might be unique to your business.
Want to know more about what goes into a great website? Or want to talk with professional Seattle web designers about building your perfect business website? Contact us today at 206-355-0894 to get a free estimate.
Seattle Web Designers Discuss: Better Brand Analysis For Better Websites
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on September 9, 2014
Web branding has become a crucial part of marketing over the past few years, but while many businesses are more than ready to integrate branding into their social and marketing strategies, few take the time to design their websites around a solid branding concept. Despite that, branding efforts have been proven to increase both sales and brand loyalty, especially on web orientated businesses.
But what is branding? While many people assume that branding is a logo or a slogan, it’s actually something more. A brand is business identity. While many brands try to influence their brand image, it is the consumers who eventually create their own versions of the brand. How does this affect your website?
Visual Identity
Your visual identity is a huge influencer on your brand, partially because it affects everything that you control that your consumers can see. Visual identity includes colors, images, graphics, logo and header sizes, slogans, and basically everything that many people consider to be ‘branding’. It’s what people see on your website, and it is important. A brand analysis at this stage tells you what brand emotions to focus on, which consumers to target the website for, and what your competitors are doing, so that you can be different but better than them. Visual identity can be impressive to a consumer, but unless it is extremely bad, it won’t really make or break your website on its own. Visual identity is part of your UI, or User Interface, and it is a good idea to invest in a web designer who can represent you properly.
UX
UX is another part of your brand identity, and one that fewer people think about. UX is usability and it affects your website through several functions. The first is that it makes a website easy to use, which is beneficial to your consumer, to reducing the cost of customer service, and to improving brand loyalty. The second is that a good UX is actually present in planned content, meaning that everything present on your page becomes part of a design, intended to guide the user down the page to a call to action in order to create a lead or make a sale. A user friendly design with integrated UX is becoming increasingly important for improving consumer loyalty, and for making sales in the first place. In fact, one Australian study on multiple websites showed that return customers jumped up 17% after integrating UX into the design.
Today’s internet market is highly competitive and if you want your website to thrive, then you have to integrate branding. And that means using a better brand analysis to capture the essence of your company, your consumers, and your competition in order to formulate a digital picture of who you are as a business. For a Seattle what you want people to see, think, and feel when they visit your site. Investments in improving digital can provide as much as an 83% return, and as web purchases rise, that number is likely to as well.
Want to get started on brand analysis so that we can get started on creating a branded website for your business? Contact us today, or visit our web design page to learn more.
Five Questions to Ask Your Seattle Web Designer About Your Site
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on August 26, 2014
If you’re having your site rebuilt, redesigned, or launched for the first time, you might want to stop and take a few minutes to stop and consider the website. While you might have a really good idea of what you want and need, especially if you have some design experience, it’s always a good idea to get advice and ask questions before you do so. And most importantly,
Am I Using the Right CMS For This Site?
This is especially important to ask if you’re launching a site for the first time, or aren’t sure what you have. CMS or Content Management Systems allow you to add information to your site, and some common ones include Joomla and Wordpress. You can also have a Seattle web designer build you a custom CMS if you need it. While different CMS are better for different types of websites and different functions. Unfortunately, unless you’re prepared to do a lot of research, you might not know which is best for your site. The best thing to do is ask. You can get a recommendation for the best CMS for your business, whether it be Joomla, or something custom.
Do I Really Need That?
If you have a list of items that you want for your website, it is always a good idea to go over them with your web designer to talk about which elements are most beneficial to your site, and which, if any, you should get rid of. This is especially important if you have a lot of features and pages that you want to integrate, because feature rich usually means slow to load, which is bad for your search marketing. Plus, too many features may actually be confusing for your site. Consider talking over the essentials with your web designer and then making decisions based on recommendations.
What Happens If I Want Feature Outside the Project Scope Later?
Another important thing to discuss is whether or not the web design team will be able to make adjustments or new features after the rest of the site is finished, and how much extra that will cost you. Depending on the web design team they will want to charge an hourly or a project rate, and the final rate should depend on that. While you might not need changes outside of the project scope, it is always a good idea to discuss them so that you can make an informed decision about changes later.
There are plenty of things that you should ask your Seattle web designer, but chances are you’ve already figured out that you should get credentials and consider why you should hire them. In addition to these basics, it’s always a good idea to ask them about your site plans, what you need, and which options are best for your site so that you make sure you get the best options for your needs. Want to know more or want a consult with professional web designers? Contact Rory Martin to discuss your option
Seattle Web Design Talk – Free Websites vs. Custom Designs
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on June 19, 2014
If you’re a business owner considering putting up a website for your business then chances are you’ve already done a fair amount of research into what it’s going to take. You might already realize that you have multiple options for both free and paid websites, and you may have already decided which CRM you want, if you want an open source one. That aside, you might not know whether or not you want to pay for a website or just use a theme. As a business owner, there are several things that greatly impact your decision, and you should consider them carefully before you go out and hire a Seattle web designer that you don’t really need.
Are You Going to Profit From Your Website?
First things first, the driving source behind any industry is money and no matter what your business is, it should be all about profit. Unless, of course, you’re running a non-profit. If you are not making anything off of the website, then it is a poor business decision to spend money on it. Consider what the website will be doing, try doing a little bit of keyword research, and consider the online market for your business. If the estimated ROI looks like it will at least cover the costs of a professional web designer then a professional custom website is the way to go. If you’re looking at $30 a month in revenue from it, you might want to stick with a low-cost theme until you figure out how to boost your revenue. While a custom site is more likely to engender trust in the user, you can’t justify spending money on something that isn’t ever going to make money
Do You Need Custom Web Design?
Another big thing to consider is whether or not you actually need a custom design for your website. The vast majority of websites are one or two page information pages that ask the customer to contact them without really providing any other information, or requiring any custom services. In this case, it would be a waste of your money to pay for a custom page. You don’t need it. On the other hand, if you want your website to have a custom menu that allows users to sort through dishes available at your restaurant, check pricing, and check ingredients, then you might want a pro designer. Essentially, if you want a basic website with no real features then web design is not necessary, but otherwise, a web designer gives you a great deal of flexibility, and allows you to offer real, unique value to your site.
There are a number of reasons that custom web design is more popular for businesses than templates, starting with uniqueness, Google search impact, and ensuring that the customer doesn’t immediately associate the site with another business they know who uses the theme. Having unique graphics and a unique web page tailored to meet your needs is invaluable, if you are going to be profiting from the site.
How an All Service Web Company Can Help Small Businesses Succeed
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on March 21, 2014
It seems that everywhere you look companies are becoming more and more specialized. Social marketing is breaking down into Facebook specialists and internet marketing is breaking down into PPC, Keyword research, and conversion optimization. Unfortunately, as a small Seattle business owner, that means bad news. The more specialized the company, the less services they offer and the more people you have to hire. And that means spending more money.
While that’s great for big business, you might not be able to afford hiring all these different people for your marketing team. What you do need is a single all service web company with the right team already put together so that you can save money and hire just one company.
Let’s talk about some of the other benefits:
One Stop Shop
If you’re getting your Seattle web design, your SEO, and your social management all in one place then you won’t have to worry about talking to, dealing with, or paying multiple people. You talk to one person, they communicate your needs to the rest of the team, and that’s it. No spending hours and hours a week in meetings with different teams because you only have one team.
Everyone is On the Same Page
One of the hardest parts of working with multiple companies is that you will spend time in meetings telling different people what you want, and then spend time communicating what each team is doing across teams, or paying them to have internal meetings. When you go with a full service web company, you won’t have to deal with any of that because the entire team will already be on the same page. All you have to worry about is one type of meeting, and the team will create a strategy for your entire website.
Optimal Launch
If you don’t yet have a website then a full service company can perform what might seem like magic for your launch. How? They can co-ordinate SEO and social efforts to match up with your launch so that by the time your website is live, it’s already ready for traffic. A full service company can pull this off flawlessly, ensure that the website is SEO friendly, and make sure that your social pages and hype are ready to go, if you do that with different companies it could quite literally be a nightmare.
Cheaper
Let’s face it, when you pay different companies you’re not only paying for their services and skills, you’re also paying service costs, administration and management fees, and individual time. When you pay a single company you can cut costs because you’re only paying all of those fees to one person. What you’re paying to everyone else is just their service fees.
Want to know more about how a one-service company can benefit you? Whether you’re looking for Seattle based web development, design, SEO, or Social Media, Rory Martin can help you achieve your goals, and without the hassle of dealing with multiple companies. Contact us to learn more.
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