So you are a small business thinking of getting a new website? With so much to take in and consider it can get a little overwhelming at first. It shouldn’t be.

Here are some basic tips we recommend to small businesses who are embarking on a new website.

1) Research your competitors – We always try to suggest to our clients that they try find 5 examples of their competitors websites to analyse. By doing this you will quickly work out what you do and don’t like. Often it is easier to work out what you want by seeing examples of others. Learn from others mistakes and take inspiration from their successes.

2) Define your difference – Have a think and work out exactly what sets your business apart. What do you do that is different from everyone else. Are you friendlier? Cheaper? More exclusive? By understanding what sets you apart it will make it easier to work out the direction of your website and how you want to relay this information to your clients.

3) Target your Customers – Know who you are targeting. Remember you cannot be everything to everyone. It is always better to be bold and go down a direction of who you are and who you want to target, rather than end up with a website that is stuck in the middle and doesn’t resonate with anyone.

4) Aim to grow – Plan your website to be one that grows with your business. Perhaps have a News Section that you can constantly update to keep your site relevant. Don’t build your site into one that you cannot add to or grow. By updating, expanding and building on what you have your site will stay relevant and interesting to your customers. Not only will it be attractive to new visitors, it will also constantly be relevant to repeat visitors seeing new articles and information.

5) Time for a logo change? With many small businesses we tend to find the time to get a new website often coincides with a new era in their business and hence a new logo. The look of your logo can greatly affect the strength of your site. A new site with an old, outdated logo can often look out of place. If your business needs a new logo, please talk to our friendly team who may assist you with some great logo specials.

If you want to get the utmost benefit from your online business, then it is sensible to think of creative and unique methods to market the business on the World Wide Web. One such unbeaten way is to come up with an inventively designed website and it is ceaselessly rational to seek the help of a specialized web designer for developing the website.

Note-

•The objective of creating a website is to turn the visitors into potential customers therefore it is important to make navigation of the website trouble-free. The symphony of the diverse pages, content and menu should be eye-catching and naive.

•An experienced web designer has the capability of designing a website which is uncomplicated to navigate. This clear-cut tactic makes sure that the visitors like the website, gets an explicit perception about the company and develops inquisitiveness for conducting business.

•Multifarious navigation pattern is a strict no-no while designing the website. Unproblematic site navigation is the finest option, where visitors can smoothly reach the pages and information they want.

Importance of good navigation in web designs-

As is suggestive from the name itself, navigation systems operate as a route-finder for users to move about n the website. A good navigation pattern can assist in promoting the right web pages to the users. It is exceedingly difficult to estimate where relevant content might be positioned without the aid of a navigation system.

Navigation pattern ought to be instinctive. A good web designer will identify with the fact that you need to anticipate the action of the users and that will assist users get the complete advantage of visiting the website. Several web sites are for education purposes thus it becomes very important that the navigation pattern ensures that the users get what they are searching for without getting astray.

Navigation also form a very vital part of the web site design. In fact, a large part web sites designs comprises of developing the navigation system itself. Latest technologies such as AJAX and Flash now attach navigation systems which are very interactive and offer some very appealing design idea. A number of the world’s best websites are the ones which are especially plain in design and use the navigation pattern to create a concept. Making a navigation pattern which is not steady can upshot in poor usage of the website as well as throw in to poor website designing.

A good quality navigation pattern also assist in placing web sites significantly on search engine ranking. This is essential since online marketing is one of the main ways to magnetize users to the website. First-rate programming techniques can make certain that search engines look within the navigation composition as well to index pages.

When designing web pages, readability is key in getting a message across. Keeping people interested enough in a website to read the text and stay on a page has as much to do with appearance as it does actual material provided. The best information in the world will not matter one iota if it is presented in a way that makes it difficult to understand or read, which is why proper formatting is so important to any site.

Objectives

The objective of any website is to get a message across in text or image. The content provided must be both interesting and accurately written; however, neither of these will matter if it is difficult to actually read. So the reader, the audience, and many other targets need to be taken into consideration when formatting a website. If the intended reader is very tech-savvy, a basic site filled with images may not be the best idea. If the targeted visitors are older, the typeface should be plain, clean and large enough to easily read.

Suggestions

Some of the basic ideas for good website formatting include the following:

• Fonts – The simpler a font is, the better, other than for certain decorative or header purposes. Anything other than the standard web-safe fonts such as a decorative font is not going to appear correctly on every browser. Something non-recognized will simply show up as standard text such as Arial or Times unless Google Web Font codes are used as this is a way around the boredom of web safe fonts. Additionally, using gif’s for decorative headers renders them useless in regards to SEO as the words have become images and are no longer text. This method to use fancier fonts is no longer a valid method unless SEO is of no concern.
• White Space – Placing a large amount of text onto a page should be avoided. It makes reading more difficult and increases the chance of information being missed or skipped over completely. There should be an adequate amount of space between letters, words and lines to promote easier reading. Generally, erring on the side of using too little text is less risky than filling the page so full that it looks sloppy and overwhelming.
• Highlighting – Even with copy that is well-formatted and easy to read, there will still be those who skim content rather than more in-depth reading. So using different highlighting methods, such as: headers and sub-headers; bullet points and lists; a moderate amount of boldface; italics; and underlining is appropriate. In this way, important points can be highlighted so that they are less likely to be missed.

In general, the main job of any design company is to present content in such a way that the most important information is relayed using creative methods. Knowing how a website will look to browsers, providing interest and emphasis where necessary, and keeping crowding to a minimum allows for the best chance for a site to be usable and successful. It is a good idea for a business to have several people critique a website and offer opinions. Understanding what people actually see when visiting a page will help to solve any problems and create a better formatted, reader-friendly website!