How To Identify A Quality Website Design Company

The website design industry is highly competitive with many different businesses all-competing for your clientele.  This provides a great buyers market for web design services and you should utilize this buyer’s advantage to secure the right company for you.

When choosing the right website design company you should consider the following:

1) How Many Questions Do They Ask:  A website design company that asks many questions about your business, customers, products and goals is more likely to produce a web design you are happy with.  When they don’t ask you many questions it is highly probably they will be using templates to design your website from.

2) View Their Complete Portfolio:  Ensure that you request to view their complete portfolio and in conducting the review note the use of colours and styles in their design.  It the website design company appears to use only one style or limited colours then gauge whether these colours and styles suit your business.

3) Do They Have A Plan:  A quality web design company will have a planning document which walks you through the process of building your website.  The more comprehensive the plan the more likely you are to be working with a professional company.

4) Ask Them About SEO:  While the actual website designer does not need to know SEO it’s important that someone within the company can clearly articulate the benefits of SEO.  All website designs now need basic SEO integration to ensure traffic generation and success.

5) Call Their Recent Clients:  Choose 2 recent clients of the web design company to call and ask them about their experience.  Specifically find out how smooth the process was and any potential sticking points you should know about.

6) Who Owns the Copyright:  This can be a major problem with some website design companies as they wish to maintain copyright on all their work.  Unfortunately this is not what you desire, you want to own full copyright to the materials produced for you.

7) Set the Deadline:  Prior to engaging the website design company makes sure you tell them of your set deadline of delivery.  Ask them if they can confidently deliver on time and meet your targets.  If they are unable to then you need to find a company that will.

8) Source File Access:  A quality website design company will give you full unrestricted access to the source files which run your site.  By having this access you can always have another designer edit your files rather than engaging the same company.

When you find a website design company that fits these major criteria you are most probably working with a quality company.  It’s important to remember that you need to like the company you are working with so ensure their personality style meets yours!

Google Panda Update – How It Affects Search Engine Optimisation

As you know Google is the primary search engine that all businesses are aiming to dominate and recently a major update has been released affecting all websites. It is not uncommon for Google to release updates as they are constantly improving the way they rank sites, as a business owner it is your responsibility to ensure your website keeps track with those updates.

At Sigma InfoTech our teams of experts have studied the latest update called the “Panda Update” and identified three major changes to Search engine optimisation in the update you need to understand:

SEO Major Change 1: Poor Quality = Poor Results

In the Panda Update Google changed the algorithm it uses to index and rank sites so that it discounted low quality, low value sites. Sites that have unique, valuable content will be ranked higher then sites that have low value, duplicate content.

No longer can a cheap, duplicate content site rank well in the search engine you must invest in building quality sites with well-written and well-researched content. This is not something new though as at Sigma InfoTech we have always told our clients they need quality content and quality sites to get long-term search engine results.

Search Engine Optimisation Major Change 2: Become Google’s Content Partner

The second major change in the Panda Update is Google has stated publicly they will reward trusted, high quality sites. It is important right now to ensure you are optimizing your site effectively and within Google’s terms of service. If you are doing this then you will be rewarded by Google, here is the direct quote from Google:

“Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.”

When creating your website ensure you are producing content and pages on your site that reflect what Google and your visitor requires. Sigma InfoTech clients should be elated with this news as all of your websites are built on this principle.

Website Optimisation Major Change 3: Win-Win-Win

An out-dated but often used technique for Search Engine Optimisation is to write content designed to rank well in search engines without considering your readers. The “Panda Update” is forcing website publishers to provide content that is “Win-Win-Win”.

Win 1: Provide content that readers and visitors want to read and find valuable

Win 2: Provide content that is well search engine optimised and easily indexed by Google

Win 3: Rank well because you have achieved your visitors and Google’s goals

Simply put, the Panda Update means website owners who are making an investment in quality content, quality web design and website design quality coding will be rewarded. Google is trying to improve the quality of their search engine results and by following their simple rules you will start to rank well.

Web Design-Significance of Web Usability in Website Design

Web usability is to make easy and efficient way, for your users to find, what they are looking for through an effective Web design. An effective website design can increase the time spent by each customer on your website and thereby improving the chances of increasing the sales or generating a lead.

Uniformity forms an integral part of a Good Web site design

Users have steadily become adapted to a particular layout for a web site design and thus have become the standard for most of the websites. Some of them are:

1) “Organization logo” at the top left with logo linking back to the home page.

2) “About us” is used for organizational information.

3) “Navigation bar” at the same place on each page.

4) Anything flashing and places above your logo is probably an “advertisement”

4) Information like “Privacy policy and terms of use” in the footer

There are numerous other unrecorded conventions that people have started to expect. It is important that Web Site Designers should appreciate the prominence of these conventions in a web site design as we are steadily becoming used to these things while accessing a website.

Size can cost!
It is important for a site to load quickly as customer is very impatient to get the information he want. An average user will not wait for more than 6-7 seconds for a page to download.

Some aspects you may want to consider are:

1) Use CSS to layout your web page.
2) Use CSS to create navigation
3) Use Web optimized graphics

Information should not be hidden

Ensure that it is easy to access and find information on the website. A good web site designer will always makes it easier for people with all sorts of interests to find information. Your web site design should provide info for those people who need just brief information and also for people who want to find as much as possible for the product and services.

Navigation as important as content

We understand the importance of web site navigation in any web site design. Make sure that the navigation makes it easier for people to find information on the web site. There is no point in having a lot of content on your website if no body is going to find it. Make sure that no information is more than three clicks away.

These are only a few points you should consider when developing a good web site design. It is always a good idea to show your website to your family and friends with different Internet skill levels and find out how easy or difficult it is for them to find the information on your website.

Sigma InfoTech an Australian based Website design, website development firm specialising in web design, graphic design, Software Development, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimisation helps to remain high in the search engines and with it any of the sites can achieve the desired goal of influencing profits.

Flash making Wonders in Website Design

Many people include Flash in their website design (or at some stage of website development) so that they can attract the visitors thereby improve the look and feel of their website and also showcase their products and services in the banner via Flash.

If Flash on a website is used properly in a website design then it becomes a great way to enhance the graphical experience of the website visitors and also provide them fast preview of the products and services and hence save their time which impresses them.

Some good uses of Flash on a website (without it allowing overshadowing your website design or look and feel) are:

•  Flash Menu: Use of Flash menus is a good way to develop a website design that looks fresh without making the website too heavy.

•  Flash Banner: Flash is used in the banner of the websites. If a flash banner is created properly it can really showcase your products and services more precisely and beautifully to your visitors. However only 5% websites use the banners very well. A lot of website designers don’t realise that just using flash for the sake of it can actually work against the business. When anyone visits a website and is impressed at the first page he likes to visit all the pages of the pages thus increasing the number of potential customers.

•  Flash Presentation: If you need to provide a presentation through your website, the best option is to incorporate a flash presentation. The biggest reason for using Flash is that it’s always smaller (if designed properly) in size and more effective than a PowerPoint.

Numbers of websites have been created in flash only, and yes they have proved successful to a business. Some of the sites like of online music, online video have to be developed in Flash so as to gain more potential customers. The point to be noted here is that the customer has always received good feedback for their website and it has done great wonders to their business. Customers have the capability to listen to their music online. This was a perfect scenario (and excuse) for developing a website completely in Flash. Even at that time we provided a HTML version of the website for people on a slow connection.

In conclusion, I would again iterate that Flash is a great tool but it should be used discretely in your website design. Consider if Flash is going to add any value to your business and your website. Discuss this carefully with your website designer and check if others in your industry have used Flash and how successful it has been for them. Just don’t use flash for the sake of it.