Web design basics

Web Design Basics

In the past, I have looked at marketing your website, a very basic HTML course, choosing images and fonts for your website. Web Design Basics is going to guide you through the whole process of designing a website. First things first, let’s get the planning started.

Before you Begin

When looking at web design basics we need to start right at the beginning and ensure we plan correctly and have everything in place.

Strategy > Plan > build > Promote

Strategy

Get your keywords in place (Google has a great tool to help with this here).
What must brand rules must the website adhere to?
Who will be your users?
What is your marketing strategy?

Plan

What information does the site need to give? Here you need to look at databases; what information/data does your website need to gather and where will it be stored.
Create a sitemap for the website – this will help you determine the navigation structure
Put a drawing together of how the overall website will look and any sub-page special features (be consistent though, don’t want your visitors thinking they are on a different website).
What calls to action will your website include? Good marketing practice dictates every page that sells something (a service or a product) must have a call to action – don’t forget even pages such as your contact page may need a call to action, especially if you are hoping to encourage people to sign up to a newsletter.
What is the brand identity for the website? This should match your company in the real world.
Are there any special requirements for the code language? (Will your site be HTML, PHP, ASP etc)
If you are using content-management or e-commerce systems do you require a bespoke system or are you happy to use a robust “off-the-shelf” system such as WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Zen Cart and so on.

Build

Valid code is vital – make sure that your developer adheres to standards established by the W3 Consortium.
Content Management System needs to be put into place
E-Commerce platform needs to be built
Elements such as movies, buttons, banners etc need to be built a this stage
The database/source needs to be built
Test and implement the site.

Promote

Search Engine Indexing – add your website to the major Search Engines (but don’t forget the smaller niche ones too!).
Search Engine Optimisation – On page optimisation should have been completed in the build stage; but further enhancement of your site needs to be carried out here.
Email and Mailshots are great tools to get the message about your new website across quickly – getting to the top of a search engine for your chosen keyword/phrase will be much more successful if your campaign includes real-world advertising thrown into the mix.
Keyword research – recheck at this point to ensure your keywords/phrase are the most effective.
Social marketing – will you use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc? You should use a selection of these in every campaign for your website – which you will choose may be down to personal preference. But also, consider which your target market is using – if the demographic group you are targeting tend to favour a particular platform you MUST also use that platform.

Great websites

Great websites start with great planning!

However, before you start planning the design and functionality (these are important – but later) it is important to start at the beginning.
The beginning of any design to achieve a great website is to consider who your market is. Who are you aiming your website to? Who will use it the most?

Just deciding to target your great websites for everyone is ok if your product or service is something that everyone will want and you can provide your product or service to everyone. For example, here we must consider who everyone is. This is all age groups including children – would children need your product or service? It also means in every country regardless of trade restrictions (your country may not allow you to sell to certain countries – if in doubt check first!).

By now I am sure that you are realising that targeting your website at everyone isn’t the best use of your time and resources. As an extra bonus, you will be rewarded by the search engines for not targeting everyone with higher rankings – you will always achieve higher rankings and great websites by narrowing your target audience.

Narrowing your target audience

Realistically, your great websites will be used by a certain demographic – i.e. a certain age group and geographic region. You may only supply to your own country – if this is the case, you can narrow your keywords to your country. If your product or service is most likely only to be used by a certain age group then target that group.

Before you even think of the design of your site getting your target audience right is vital, this will determine the look and feel of your website; differing age groups or even genders respond differently to websites depending on the look and feel – the design is determined by who you are targeting – get it right and you will be onto a successful website.

It is important to design your website for your audience, not for your business.

Finding Good Quality Images Is Important For A Great Looking Website. Sources Include Photographers, Stock Libraries Etc. Icon Shows A Light Blue Camera Set On A Grey Background

Finding Images

Finding great images for your new website can seem a daunting task. But you have a number of different options available:

Take the photos yourself

This can be a great way if you are good with a camera. Please bear in mind being good with a camera doesn’t mean you know which way to point it. As most professional photographers will tell you, a great composition goes way beyond just being able to balance the image in the viewfinder. Many photographers will take photos at different times of the day, just to ensure the perfect lighting, in the studio they will work hard to ensure the correct lighting for the image they want to achieve.

Hire a Freelance Photographer

If you don’t know a good freelance photographer, consider asking friends or colleagues, also consider that in most circles on Facebook or Google + there will be some freelance photographers or people that can recommend one. OK so you will have to factor in their prices to the cost of your website, but it is well worth that extra spend if you want unique photos on your site.

Royalty Free Photos

Don’t be tempted to simply pull images off Google Images, that way will lead to an expensive court case and you will most likely lose it!

There is an exception to this, some images on Google have a Creative Commons Licence attached to them, these are ok for you to use. Images that are free for you to use in Google Images will have a “CC” in a cirlce attached to them in the details. If you prefer to use Flickr.com, you will see the Creative Commons Licence information if you right click on the image.

Beyond Google Images and Flickr, there are a large number of Stock Photo websites such as http://pixabay.com (free stock photos), and our personal favourite https://stock.adobe.com (very reasonably priced high quality photos)

Royalty free sites such as unsplash.com, gratisography.com and littlevisuals.co have become very popular, they offer free photos on a weekly/monthly basis sent straight to your inbox – check them out there are some beautiful photographs available.

Marketing Mistakes

Want to avoid the most common website marketing mistakes? Then read on.

When you first have a new website it is easy to fall into common website marketing mistakes. We all know the situation, you buy a new toy for a child at Christmas, by the afternoon they are playing with the box, by Boxing Day it is forgotten and they have moved on.

All too often, we fall into the playing with the box trap. We pay for a new shiny website and invest in some search engine marketing. We sit and wait for all the big business to roll in. By the end of the second day you start to think that there is a mistake, the developer/website marketing specialist didn’t put your website on Google. Your search for your website and your worst fears are proven, your developer and or marketing specialist didn’t publicise your website as it isn’t in the top 10. This is the typical process for a new website owner and one of the common website marketing mistakes.

OK, you may think it is easy for me to defend your developer as I am one. But, unless you paid for advertising space on Google or you are only searching for your company name, you won’t find your new website in the top ten. Just a small aside here. I am always coming across people who have paid to have some marketing carried out on their website where the marketing company informs them the campaign has been successful as they are number one in the Google listings. Indeed they are, for their company name – as I have said countless times on this site, you should be number one on any search engine for the name of your company. Let’s face it your company name and location are unique, as such, it should be number one within any search based on the company name and location – or your business isn’t listed.

Website Marketing Mistakes

I guess the previous paragraph really constitutes as one of the common website marketing mistakes. All too often people are satisfied with top spot in Google or other search engines for their company name and location. However, most people don’t search for your company by name – they search by a keyword or phrase that they think will be successful in returning the product or service they want. However, let’s consider some other common mistakes, as that one is too easy.

Duplicate Content

Calling it copying sounds a little harsh but that is exactly what it is. Don’t fall into the trap of looking at what your competitors have to say, especially those at the top of the search listings. It is tempting to duplicate what they say. After all, it got them to the top right? However, most modern search engines detect duplicated content and penalise your site for copying – based on which one was first. Also, the owner of the site you copied would be within their rights to take you to court!

Things can be a little more subtle, it is one of the more common website marketing mistakes to copy your own content across several pages. It does speed things up if your title and description are the same across all of your pages. However, the search engines will pick this up and rate your site lower as the title and descriptions will have nothing to do with the content of the pages you copied it too.

Wrong Title

This is one of the most common website marketing mistakes people make, they rush to get their site out there without any thought to the title of the page and sub-pages on the site.

The title should be a descriptive short sentence to summarise what the page is about (it must include the keyword or key-phrase for that page).

Field of Dreams

Just like the child in our opening discussion who received a toy and eventually gave up on it. All too often I come across people who have built a great looking website and given up on it too soon.

This is probably the single biggest of all the website marketing mistakes people make. The old adage “build it and they will come” doesn’t really happen in the real world.

Running a website takes work and lots of time and patience. The reason that web marketing specialists charge so much is that there is a lot of man-hours involved in getting a website to the top of the search engine listings.

Website marketing mistakes happen all the time, but this one can be avoided and must be. When you purchase or build a website, you must realise that you need to commit time to promoting the site to get it higher in the search engine listings. It is a long process, a week of work can result in little or no sign that your website is moving up the listings. Then one day, when you least expect it, your site will jump up those listings. But only if you work at it.

Assuming Google is the only one

It is one of the most common website marketing mistakes to believe Google is the only search engine. However, they are the most commonly used:

Google does have a massive share of the market – some 82%, but there are other search engines – Bing, Yahoo to name but a few. Now before you purists start calling foul, I know Yahoo isn’t a search engine, but a directory!

A more important issue to note here than just assuming that Google is the only search engine, is that you must never write your website for the search engines. This is one of the typical website marketing mistakes people new to the industry make. Websites should always be written with your customers in mind, i.e. real people, NOT search engines.

Lack of Keywords

You have come up with a great website and want to get it seen. You have decided that you will advertise your site based on this keyword or that key-phrase. It is one of the easiest website marketing mistakes to make to not include your keyword or key-phrase enough times on the page.

Sadly I cannot give you the exact number of times your keyword or key-phrase should appear in your copy, as this varies from search engine to search engine. However, it should be in the range of 3-7% of the text. Don’t forget to include your keyword/key-phrase in the headings and ALT text of images. Just a small note about ALT texts. They are intended to be a description of the image to ensure that people who don’t display images (such as people with poor eyesight who use a screen reader) can understand what the image is. Please don’t be tempted to stuff ALT tags with keywords – mention them once.

The reverse is also one of the worst website marketing mistakes – don’t stuff your page with your keywords. Please make your website easy to read, it is too tempting to keep finding clever ways to add the keyword or key-phrase to the text. Please make it part of the paragraph, but remember to use standard English rules when writing. Don’t repeat the same word more than once in a paragraph!

One of the best ways of ensuring your website reads correctly is to test it against the Flesch Reading Ease Readability Formula. It sounds, and is, complicated. Fortunately, you can click here to test your text against the formula and read what exactly the Flesch Reading Ease Readability Formula is.

Link Spam

Google ranks your website based on how popular it is in searches. If your site is referred to on a website considered to be an industry specialist, you will receive kudos with the search engines. Building good quality links to your website is a great way to improve your search engine ranking. However, Google and all other search engines will give your sites severe penalties if you have lots of links that are poor quality, this is one of the worst website marketing mistakes. Don’t ever be tempted to accept links from websites that have nothing to do with your industry. Worse still are the links from so-called link farms. These sites are blacklisted by the search engines, because of this your website will also be blacklisted if it appears on those link farms or you have a link to them.

Building good quality links takes time. A simple way to start getting quality backlinks (links from other websites) is to use a blog on your site or use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. I know you don’t like using these sites, after all, who wants to hear what you had for breakfast! They are, however, a great tool to get your business seen, consider using them. Another way is to look at your competitor’s websites that are in the top ten listings, who links to them? If you can discover who is linking to them, why not ask those companies to link to you also? The worst that can happen is that they say no.

Flash Websites

My final look at website marketing mistakes is to consider Flash websites. Not the ones that just simply look great, but the ones built using Adobe Flash. Essentially a website built using Flash is just an image, a graphic. Search engines cannot see the text contained in images (I know there have been some moves towards search engines being able to detect the text, but generally, they still have great difficulty. Anything that is a block in the path to search engine nirvana is something that will cause a search engine to stumble and not pick up your site.

If you want a website built using Adobe Flash, you should have an HTML version available too.

I hope that this discussion to common website marketing mistakes has been useful. Anything that is considered risky, sailing close to the wind, black-hat, should be avoided, eventually Google and the other search engines will get wise and prevent those methods and websites employing those techniques will also be prevented from achieving their original position. Read what the search engine recommends, that has to be the best start to your ultimate goal and help you to avoid website marketing mistakes.

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Jonathan Roberts