Practical tips to make sure you don't end up with a clunky website.
Practical and Responsive Web Design
Flash animations and pretty graphics are appealing, but they can slow down your website. There's plenty of other distractions for web surfers to jump in.
The key is to have a simple, targeted and engaging web design. To achieve this, first set goals for your customers and yourself. What do you want them to accomplish? (subscribe, shop etc.) What do you want the website to accomplish? (inform, sell etc.).
Next, work with a web designer to come up with a simple and responsive layout. Simplicity can be both practical and stylish. It's easier to build, maintain, and consume less server space. Minimalistic design removes unnecessary elements and naturally highlight the stuff that matters. These features also make the website suitable for other devices such as smart phones and tablets.
Value Based Content
Google has implemented a number of updates that has affected SEO. Websites get a penalty for using too many keywords and exact domain matches (EDM) for the sole purpose of achieving high rankings in search results.
More value is now place in relevant content. Apart from focusing on getting found, also pay attention to what your customers are going to find. If your website is littered with keywords and has nothing substantial to offer, they will leave.
That isn't to say that you should forget SEO altogether. Strike a balance between on page optimisation and value based content. Update the website with articles or blog posts to keep the content fresh and encourage engagement.
Fresh Perspective
Hire and invest in new talent for fresh ideas and innovative solutions. Apart from web design, you also have to think about other disciplines. Web development is needed to ensure that the website is properly coded. You may also need to optimise your website for online marketing.
For most SMEs, these services are expensive. Chances are, you're only going to need web design and development on a project basis, so there's no need to hire full time. Online marketing involves SEO, Social Media, and Mobile Marketing which you may need full time, but are too costly to maintain.
An ideal solution is offshore staffing. As a business owner, you'll need someone good, efficient, and low cost for work that don't directly provide profit, but are still important. So why not leverage this option? Outsourcing web design and other related work is a practical and efficient solution for SMEs.
An effective website is a balance between style and function. And by the way, all that white space isn't so bad.
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