Web Design Essentials

A well-designed site holds the visitors' attention, provokes action and keeps them coming back for more. It must not only be intuitive and easy to navigate, it must provide a pleasant and memorable experience for the user.

How do we accomplish all that?

1. 

   Careful Planning

   Before we start coding, we consider the layout and page structure of you site, as well as how users will move from one page to another (navigation). We produce sketches and process-maps to illustrate the flow of information, and we do visual mock-ups of design concepts.

2. We take the time to Understand your Audience

   Knowing your audience helps set the tone for your content and layout, and allows us to identify what visitors will be looking for on your site.
3. 

   Careful colour scheming

   It is important to keep a consistent colour scheme throughout the site to provide a feeling of cohesion. If we are designing your site around an image, we will use a colour palette that complements the image's colours, as well as the corporate colours of your company.

4. Maintaining consistent navigation

   Since people read from left to right, top to bottom, the upper left-hand corner of your site is the first place your visitors will look. This is the ideal place for a company logo, but it is best to keep your navigation buttons close by and keep them consistent, along with font and color choices, for easy reading and fluid movement from page to page.
5. 

   We code for different browsers

   Your site may look different when viewed in different browsers, so we spend a lot of time testing it in the major ones (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera), to ensure consistent performance. We also adhere to the W3C Standards of web code and valid syntax.

6. We test your site, then test again

   When we have created or redesigned a site, we test it ourselves, and then submit it to you for testing, to find things that may have been overlooked or misinterpreted. You can rest assured that the final version of your website will not go live until it has your stamp of approval.

In Conclusion

Our design process is focused around technical performance, meeting your business needs, and meeting the daily needs of your customers. While your requirements may be for business publicity and increased sales, your customers may simply want an intuitive, visually pleasing website, where they can easily place an order or find the information they are looking for. We cater for both.

SEO: what it is, why you need it, and why you should not pay too much for it

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will help your site rank highly in popular search engine results, but it has become a buzz-word used by greedy web-developers who want to charge a lot for doing what any web-developer should automatically do when they build or update a new site.

So what is SEO really?

Search engine optimisation is the act of optimising a website (in terms of code, content and links) to increase traffic from major search engines like Google.

Search engines index content on the web with computer programs called "bots", which move through websites by "crawling" from link to link. In order to provide the most useful search results, search engines assess pages in terms of:

• Relevance

  The relevance of the content on a site depends on how closely it matches a search query. A site's content is considered more relevant when the queries terms appear in the title or headings of the content, and in the HTML tags.

• Popularity

  A website's importance is measured by how many other sites link back to it. These backlinks carry more weight when they come from highly respected websites, and in recent times popularity on social networking sites like Facebook, blogs and Twitter have come to mean a lot too.

How to boost your SEO

1. Add unique content to your site

   Brainstorm relevant phrases that your audience might use to find you, and make sure you use those phrases in your content. Unique, quality content also gives other sites a reason to link to you.

2. Place keywords in key places

   Relevant, descriptive keywords should appear in your page titles, headings and subheadings (in terms of content and code). However, that doesn't mean you should cram them anywhere you can. Google, for example, deliberately demotes pages that have resorted to "key-word stuffing" in inappropriate places, such as the image 'alt' tag (which should contain a concise description of the image in question, and no more.)

3. Create a sitemap

   Sitemaps can improve SEO by describing the structure of the website to the search engine bots that need to index the pages, to make sure they don't miss anything. A sitemap can be created in a few seconds by using a tool of the sort Google provides. Sitemaps are not usually made visible to the human users of your site, and if you find users are getting lost, it may pay to ask why your site's navigation or structure is so complicated in the first place.

4. Add links with strong anchor text

   When linking to relevant sites, tell your readers where you're sending them. The anchor text (the wording displayed in a hyperlink) should closely match the site you are pointing to.
   
   For example:

   strong anchor text: "Look at our Instant Website Templates!"
   weak anchor text: "Click here to look at our Instant Website Templates!"

5. Submit your site to search engines

   Intelligent search engines like Google don't take more than a matter of months to find and index your site, but by deliberately submitting your site to major search engines, you can start appearing in search engine results within a few days.

6. List your site in local directories

   The quickest way to promote your site is to list your business in any relevant local directories, providing well-respected backlinks to your site, which will boost your ranking. For example, if you are a motel owner, you should make sure you are listed in accommodation directories like Jasons, AA or any of the free directories like www.accommodationz.co.nz.

Conclusion

Search engine optimisation takes time, but is not difficult. By sticking to the quidelines above, you will help establish a strong visitor base for your site, or expand your online business through increased sales. However, do not listen to web-developers who want to charge a flat monthly fee for "optimising" your site - unless they can clearly state additional services that they are including, such as paid advertising space on Google.

Slideshow Example

Here is one of the ways we could spice up your website for you.

prev next

Tiger

Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger (Panthera tigris) is the largest and possibly most dangerous of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. A case where a tiger killed an adult Indian Rhinoceros has been observed.

Seal

The eared seals (sealions & fur seals) are marine mammals in the family Otariidae, one of three groupings of Pinnipeds. Pinnipeds are carnivorous, eating fish, shellfish, squid, and other marine creatures.

Pheasant

This is a female pheasant. Pheasants are characterised by strong sexual dimorphism, males being highly ornate with bright colours and adornments such as wattles and long tails.

Indian Elephant

Indian Elephants are smaller than African Elephants, and live in or near the forest jungle. Thay are widely domesticated and have been used in forestry in South and Southeast Asia for centuries.

Deer

This is a deer calf. Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. They are widely distributed and hunted, with indigenous representatives in all continents except Antarctica and Australia.

More information about ecommerce solutions

More information about cms control over website