As a web designer I constantly hear questions about driving traffic and optimization for the search engines – yet, what I find most fascinating, is that there seems to be much less consideration for the actual design of the website itself. When designing custom websites for our clients we use SEO enhanced platforms and strive toward best practices for optimizing the site, but nothing – I must repeat – Nothing takes the place of good design!

When your customers land on your home page, what they immediately see will determine whether they stay to further explore, or simply click off to another site. After that function plays an important role in creating a user-experience that will keep customers coming back to use your site.

Here are a few very important things to take into consideration when thinking about Web Design -

What is the goal of your website?

Basically there are two considerations – a) attracting customers to your physical place of business or, b) the sales of your services or items online. In either case you need to know who your market is and what will capture their interest. Therefore the design needs to fit with your customers’ idea of your business. This seems to be the most difficult part for web clients to grasp.
We know that you love puppies – but you’re trying to sell soap. Our job is to create a design that focuses your audience on soap, and it’s more difficult if we have to incorporate your love of puppies, which doesn’t make much sense to us or your customers. You must separate yourself from the equation and stick to the goal of the website – which is to sell soap.

Does your design fit that goal?

Many clients seem to feel that just having a website is good enough. And especially if they’ve tried to create one on their own and it’s taken many hours to just get it working – enough may seem to be enough. Others seem to follow the thought that it’s a pretty good design for the ‘local’ competition – without any consideration that this is your business in a world-wide marketplace.

The best place to start thinking about the design of your site starts on the internet – with looking at similar types of websites – and the absolute best place is start looking at the ‘best of the best’ sites. Good design doesn’t have to be expensive, but bad design can cost you your business.

InForm & Function

What type of information do want to provide to your customers? This is a really important question to ask yourself because a lot of our clients try to start off with the ‘sell’. No matter what the business, no-one wants to be ‘sold’ on anything. Choose instead to inform. Don’t try to sell anyone ‘the best that money can buy’ – because no-one’s buying it. What is it? Why is it important? Who are you? If you can’t answer the question ‘why should I care?’ – no-one else will either.

Your information should be well organized, informative and easy to find. There is nothing to be gained by the old-style SEO link infiltrated nonsensical paragraphs other than to garner customer frustration. The first goal of your site should be your customer’s satisfaction – not Googles’.

If you are selling goods on your site, invest in a shopping cart and payment gateway system. Which means make buying online a simple and enjoyable experience for your customers. You will not convert many sales if you think people will call you to place an order, nor if you don’t have a way of accepting credit cards. The last tip I will provide is ‘price wisely’. The internet is the easiest place to compare pricing – so temper your desire for maximum profit by being reasonable and people will reward you by coming back for more.

News
If your business is growing – or if you want it to – then there’s bound to be news, and your website should be an important component in delivering that news. It’s important that your website be designed with the right kind of flexibility to match your business. Do you have a changing calendar of weekly events? Do you sell items online (or want to) with seasonal pricing, or occasional sale prices? Are you bringing in a new line of products that you want all your customers to know about? The solutions to take care of your requirements are as diverse as your business is distinct, so it’s important to tailor a solution to the way you want to do business on the web. And if you’ve been doing business on the web for a while, then you probably have a better idea of what’s working and what’s not than when you first started out – which makes it a great time to find ways to do more of what’s working best for you.

PurpleTree Graphics can help with any and all of the above. Do you have an existing site that needs a little buff and polish? Is it time for a complete remodel? Are you looking to have your business’ first website go live as soon as possible? Or do you just need someone to look things over and make some recommendations? Give us a call today; we can help with all your web needs.

What is a Brand?

Is it a logo? A name or slogan? A graphic element or color scheme?

Your brand is the entire experience your prospects and customers have with your company. It’s what you stand for, the promise you make, and the personality you convey. The creative elements of your brand include your graphic imagery, font style, color palette, name and slogan. And your company logo is the most recognizable and memorable part of your brand identity.

What your brand is not and should not be, is an advertisement. Your branding and logo design should be developed from “who you are” and “what you represent”; not from an attempt to appear ‘commercial’ or look like the ‘other guys’. Your logo and message may be used a part of an advertising campaign but must be uniquely and honestly representative of your company and its’ message.

Why do I need branding?

Branding is crucial for products and services sold in today’s consumer markets. It’s also important in business-to-business because it helps you stand out from your competition. It provides your competitive position and brings value proposition to life; it positions you as a certain “something” in the mind of your prospects and customers. Your brand consistently and repeatedly tells your prospects and customers why they should buy from you.

Think about successful consumer brands like Disney, Tiffany or Starbucks. You probably know what each brand represents. Now imagine that you’re competing against one of these companies. If your goal is to capture a significant market share, you must start with a strong and unique brand identity or you may not get far.

Developing your brand strategy:

Before working on your brand strategy, profile your market and evaluate your competition.  Find out what works for them and what doesn’t by polling your customers. Decide where your position is within your market and where you would like to be.

Define your brand image:

• Clearly define who your company is and what you represent.
• Write it down as a list and use it to focus your logo design to only those traits which you want to convey.
• Choose colors, fonts and other visual elements that match your company description.
• Remove the personal desire to represent yourself and your emotional likes and dislikes from your design choices and focus only on the company or product you are selling.
• Use surveys to have customers assist you in selecting the most effective imagery.

Considerations when creating your logo:

Flexibility – Does it work with ink, thread, and pixels?
Black & White – A basic tenant of logo design is that it must look good in black and white. Even if you can afford color, chances are you’ll need to use a silhouette representation from time to time. Think newspaper ads, fax covers, office suite signage, and plaques.
Scalability – Does your logo work when it is small, as on a business card or name badge? Now how does it work on the front of your building or the side of your delivery trucks?
Shape – Many popular promotional items, like pens, can’t accommodate a full logo representation. A logo that can break apart into distinct, recognizable elements will give you greater flexibility in advertising and promotional programs.
Simplicity – Detailed logos won’t translate well embroidered on a hat, shirt, or golf towel. Research shows that simpler logos are easier to recognize, so provide your customers with a more memorable, simple design.
Color – Color is a strong element that distinguishes your brand and helps people recognize your organization. Used consistently throughout your marketing materials, color can create brand cohesion that reaches far beyond your logo. When choosing logo colors, remember that less can be more. One or two colors are easier to remember and less expensive when it comes to printing, than full color illustrative images. Be sure your logo color represents your organization but remains distinct from the competition.
International – If you will be doing business internationally, be sure to research the foreign connotations of your company name, tagline, logo shape, and color before proceeding.

Designing Your Website

1. What’s your website about?

Does your home page clearly demonstrate who you are and what you have to offer? You have 3 seconds for a viewer to determine whether they have landed on a site that will provide them with what they want, or whether to keep browsing. Your home page should clearly convey the message, product or service, and standard of professionalism for the clients you want to reach.

2. Designed for you but not for your clients:

Honestly, if you love dogs, that’s great, but if you’re selling something that doesn’t have a thing to do with animals, pets or dogs, your professional website is the place to leave it out. Don’t cling to the unrealistic perception that other people personally care about you and your causes. The harsh truth is that they are there to get what they want. Your design should be focused toward your customers’ interests.

3. Un-organized content:

You may understand what you do and what you have to offer, but if that information is presented in a jumble of statements all over the page, the perception is that you don’t have the knowledge or ability to provide your services in an organized and professional manner, or that it may be difficult for the customer to work with you.

4. Too much content:

While you may be an expert in the field of whatever you do, other people are really more interested in what you have to offer them. Write a book and publicize it online, but keep your website content, meaning the copy and pictures, in moderation and in line with providing enough information to generate contact with you.

5. Cumbersome fill-out forms:

Filling out a form should not feel like a personal violation. While a lot information may be necessary to provide the best service – providing the best service to potential clients may be to simply ask for contact information and then call or e-mail to ask more in-depth questions.

6.Twilight zones:

We have all run into those websites that seem to have many different things going on at once, or from page to page it seems to be a different site. This schizophrenic approach is just too confusing and gives people the impression that you are also a bit scattered. If you don’t know exactly what you want, pick a ‘theme’, and alter it over time until you find the best look and feel that suits your clients and generates the best response.

7. Re-inventing navigation:

Navigation is a tricky thing, as it naturally seems like a fun thing to get creative and play with – but not to your customers. If they are not web designers, they are looking for a way to get from A to Z in as simple and straight-forward as possible. Believe me, when it comes to navigation, forget the Mercedes and go with the Ford.

8. Where am I now?:

When designing navigation remember you know your site better than your viewers. Provide them with an easy roadmap, and a ‘you are here’ navigation system. Your buttons should indicate which page they have landed on, and provide a header with the same information if it’s not clear.

9. Drop-down menus:

Drop down or slide-out ‘sub-menus’ can be a good thing to keep an uncluttered page appearance, as long as they don’t drop down over the information that you tried so hard to present. There is nothing more annoying than trying to access the button below an unrelenting drop-down menu. It would be better to provide another page with clear navigation to sub-menus.

10. No way back and broken links:

Not many people will be interested in reloading your page several times when they can’t get back to the home page, or the link they used got them stuck in Timbuktu. These breakdowns in the system are seen exactly for what they are – unprofessional. A button that leads nowhere, or to a ‘coming soon’ page that has been up for months, also gives the viewer the impression that the site is permanently broken.

11. Slow loading pages:

Slow load times are usually due to the size of the content, or how the content was saved when sliced for the website. The designer who transforms the psd files into html web files can make a difference in the load times by verifying the best way to save each ‘slice’ of the designed document. A good web designer can make a difference in load times.

12. PDF’s as content:

Your goal with designing a site is to carry a continuous theme throughout without breaks in the flow of browsing your information. Pdf layouts are created to fit a sheet of paper, not your website, and do not have the same look, functionality and navigation. The only use of a pdf file should be offered as an option to allow the viewer to download a document to paper.

13. Flash or no flash:

I think that the best strategy for using flash is to ask yourself honestly, if making your potential customer wait for your site to load because viewing the production will add to their understanding or desire to purchase your product or service, and then adding flash and its extra expense makes sense. If it’s just for entertainment or show, the wait can send a potential client to another site faster than flash will load. Consider the need for flash over the desire.

14. Can’t stop the music:

Unless you’re a musician selling CDs, you might want to consider where and when your potential customers are viewing your site prior to adding music. Statistics show that many people access sites during the work week – while at work. If music suddenly booms across the quiet office space, forget that client hooking up to your site again. If you’re going to use music add on /off controls.

15. Doing it all:

Another huge mistake is thinking that you need to add the flash, music and sounds to come up with memorable a site. It will be memorable, though not in a good way. All that sound and fury will simply cancel out whatever information you were trying to provide. Simply, don’t use it as a substitution for good content.

16. Talking heads:

Don’t know who thought this was a good idea. The little speaking person or talking head on a site is like a really bad commercial come to life, up close and personal. Most people will head for a different site just to shut it off. Bad idea.

17. Typos:

This is a professional no-no whether on of offline. We all make mistakes, so an easy way to avoid this problem is spell check the site or have someone else read it before it goes up.

18. Poor or outdated design:

Like a bad 70’s movie, old and out-dated sites are easy to spot. What they say to a potential customer is that your information, services or products may also be poor or outdated. Your site is now accessible to potential global customers – and global competition. Is your ‘good enough’ freebie, homespun design really good enough?

19. No customer support:

Where does the customer go if they have a question? Is your contact information plain and available? What timely consideration and response do they get when and if they finally reach you? If you haven’t considered customer support in a big way, you’re way behind in a big way. People who make people-to-people connections win customer loyalty and word-of-mouth referrals.

20. It looks like a commercial:

Truth is that we have been way over exposed to the commercial aspects of design and have learned to tune it out. People simply don’t care for and will ignore those rude pop-ups, blinking banners and bopping animations – if they stay on the site long enough. Don’t try and make your site look like an advertisement. Nothing substitutes for good design.

21. Leaving the site:

This is probably the most common mistake used on sites today. Whether it is a new browser window that comes up, or a complete switch to a different site to access some part of your information or provide for purchases, this only serves to confuse and frustrate the viewer into having to figure out how to navigate within the new page or how to get back to where they were. Your information should always remain on the premises.

22. Links as content:

Simply don’t provide links to other sites that don’t reciprocate or also sell your services or products. You are not doing yourself a favor by attempting to fill your site with ‘valuable information’ as an offering to your customers. Your customers are perfectly capable of leaving your site at any time – get my drift?