There is no absolute right or wrong way to design a web site. When people ask about the best way to design a site, it always seems to come down to. . . “It depends.”

Your design decisions will depend on the type of site you’re publishing. Personal sites, entertainment sites, and corporate e-commerce sites all have different priorities and abide by different guidelines, both in terms of content and how that content is presented. And, as you might have already guessed, it depends a lot on your audience, their reason for visiting your site, etc. Good and bad design decisions are always relative. There are no “nevers”— there’s always a site out there for which a web design “don’t” makes perfect sense and is really the best solution.

The following dos and don’ts apply to the formatting and structure of the whole page

DO…

Keep all file sizes as small as possible for quick downloads. - Quick downloads are crucial for a successful user experience. If your pages take forever to download, your visitors may grow impatient and go surf elsewhere. At the very least, they’ll get cranky. Google have also recently announced that websites with a faster download time are more likely to get ranked higher than those which are slow, click here for more information.

DO…

Design for a screen size of 800 X 600 pixels unless you are certain that your audience will be viewing your pages with a different configuration. - When you design larger page sizes, you risk parts not being visible for users with older, smaller monitors.

DO…

Put your most important messages (who you are, what you do, etc in the first screenful (the top 350 pixels of the page). - Most users make judgements about a site based on that first impression, without taking the time to scroll down for more information.

DO…

Limit the length of your pages to two or three “screenfuls.” - Longer pages that require a lot of scrolling are unmanageable for online reading and make it more difficult for readers to find their place. For some reason, users do not like to scroll; they’d rather keep moving forward. It is better to break long flows of text into a few separate pages and link them together.

DON’T…

Design specifically for one browser or platform, unless you are 100% certain your audience will be viewing your pages under that configuration. - You never want to alienate your visitors. Nothing is more off-putting than arriving at a site only to find a sign that says, “You must have X browser running on X platform with X, Y, Z plug-ins to use this site.” The only thing worse is to find that nothing works.

DON’T…

Use too many animations, especially on pages with content you want people to read. - While animations are effective in drawing attention, users find them annoying and distracting when they are trying to read the text on the page. Even one looping animation can be an annoyance to some people. A whole page of spinning and flashing is a disaster.

If you would like more information on website design or would like us to take a look at your current design then why not get in touch. We love to talk with businesses and discuss what they currently have digitally as well as looking at what options are available for them to move forward.

At Generate UK, we love to impart our knowledge. It helps other businesses with their online marketing and it demonstrates all of the great services that we provide.

June 30th saw us present yet another of our locally renowned seminars at the beautiful Donnington Grove Country Club, this time in the Kennet suite. Around fifty delegates from companies spanning a whole variety of industries attended, including people from CSC, Hyperbole, Verbatim and many, many more. We kicked off the seminar with some light refreshments and networking and with the excellent weather, the mood was fantastic. Once much of the coffee had disappeared, our attendees were ushered into our very own Mr Joe Baily’s introduction and presentation. Joe discussed the way in which we here at Generate UK operate and work with clients, as well as discussing the underlying foundations and technologies that should support a business’ online marketing activity. Will your CMS grow with your company, or will it stop working as soon as your growth explodes? Does your marketing roadmap include the latest social media platforms? Are you missing out on any key marketing activities, like e-mail marketing for example? This helped open some eyes and hopefully encouraged our attendees to look at the road ahead, why update your strategy now… When the wheels of the underlying vehicle will fall off in the near future? You might as well get both right now to save a lot of heart ache and expense in the long term!

Michael Robinson then took the reigns and went on to explain some of the jargon and terms commonly used in the Internet marketing industry. Many questions were asked and many were thusly enlightened on the subjects of ‘Black hat’ vs ‘White hat’ SEO techniques and ‘Google Bombing’ among many others. This demonstrated that in having knowledge of all the different SEO and Internet marketing approaches, we can better advise and improve upon our client s online activity. This put to rest many of the doubts our delegates had regarding things like Google AdSense, Pay Per Click, Keywords and link-building where they had bad experiences in the past when working with less experienced or ‘black hat’ agencies.

The seminar was then adjourned for another round of tea and coffee so that we could make our way around and speak to many of those who attended as possible. We found that our delegates had differing reasons for attending, but many were surprised by the planned scope of the event and were very much looking forward to seeing the rest of what we had to offer.

Having set high expectations with the first half of the event, it was then down to our guest speaker Mr Ian Summerfield from Optim IP to continue the trend. Ian presented on the subject of Cloud Computing, a technology that has been around for quite sometime, but is only just entering the mainstream. Ian certainly delivered; his presentation roused many questions as some of our attendees could not believe that they could compute with incredible power, on inexpensive devices through a service provided from half way across the globe. Ian illustrated that the use of Cloud Computing is not a question of if, but when. Microsoft is giving the cloud their full backing, and more and more charities rely on cloud computing as a cheaper, more flexible alternative to maintaining their own infrastructure. Not only this, but many other platforms will migrate to the cloud from film rental, to console gaming which will dramatically change the way businesses utilise their marketing channels and the way in which they manage their customer engagement. This gave our audience much to think about as they were about to be instructed on the use of design in marketing.

Matt Lewin and I presented on a number of related subjects that determine whether or not your website design is current. I began by introducing on-page SEO, navigation and web standards as well as their affects on accessibility and design. Many people do not give these points the consideration that they deserve and to illustrate their significance I showed how many larger organisations have been sued for ignoring these points. After all, in not adhering to these guidelines, you could be damaging your user experience for up to 48% of your audience.

I then handed the talk over to Matt so he could talk our audience through the importance of designing a website with their key marketing activity and priorities in mind as well as demonstrating how a company web page could be better built for user interaction through portals and social platforms.  The reason being that marketing is moving to a more integrated and interactive paradigm and some smaller companies are falling behind the trend and could potentially be losing business as a result. Matt also talked our delegates through the process of determining their site sizing and layout so that it engages the user in all the right ways, ultimately delivering better returns and conversions which should be a part of every businesses marketing strategy.

To top off an already brilliant event, our very own social media guru Mr Ian Fergusson began to convert our audience into becoming more social media savvy. Ian shocked our audience with impressive facts and creative figures on the sheer volume of social media users and then went on to tell us that if Facebook was a country, it would be the 4th biggest country in the world behind the US based on registered users alone! If that was not shocking enough, Facebook itself has seen a dramatic shift in demographic from 16-18 year olds to mainly 45-54 year olds! So it is certainly no longer a ‘kid’s thing’ which makes it a marketing tool to be considered much more seriously as part of an integrated marketing arsenal. This talk was well received all round with many delegates asking for training and tips on how to leverage these platforms properly themselves.

After the presentation, we took questions from the floor and explained some of our fields in more depth. We were then locked into deep marketing conversations with many of our delegates 1-on-1 to advise them on some of the marketing issues they had stumbled across quite recently. We talked these through with them and suggested ways they could perhaps revisit these activities and tweak their approach to better their results.

We love to help people and businesses with their online marketing and the feedback we received on the number of free tools we gave away and the advice we included in our seminar was astounding. So much so that we are currently planning another event to invite you all back to! If you would like to request access to the presentations from our great speakers, then please click here.
I look forward to seeing you all again in the future!

Kind regards,
John King.

Bridging the chasm:
Where design should meet technology.

Website design can be a murky subject. I’m not only talking about the coding side of things, I’m talking about the graphics that jump out at you and bite your arm off. Given the impact your website design can have on potential prospects, why doesn’t it get more attention in SME marketing?

There are a few reasons, but key among them feature: the entrepreneur’s tendency to spend most of their time ‘fire-fighting’ and the disconnection between the graphics and the technology.

For those of you that haven’t heard of the term ‘fire-fighting’ used before in the business context, it is the scenario wherein our entrepreneur dedicates all their waking moments to patching up all the short-term problems facing the business. This prevents them from working towards a successful long term strategy.

Now, if I was given a minute sum of money for all the people I spoke to about website design who then told me “yeah it’s something we thought about but we’re way too busy doing other stuff right now”, I would be substantially better off. Granted we all have those busy periods, but how often is that due to making nothing but sales? Not often.

Now, how many of these same ‘very busy’ people would say first impressions are critical? I’d be willing to bet the majority of them would, with many making references to meeting new clients and interviewees.

The thing is, in today’s new media age where marketing communications are ridiculously fragmented, many people turn to a company’s website as the hub of their brand communications for the information they need.
This means that your website will often give prospects their first impression of your company as a whole. Remember what those entrepreneurs and business owners said about the importance of a first impression? That’s right, it’s critical. So why do so many of them forget to make their website look as fantastic as possible?

When these prospects visit your site, you need to communicate the values of the brand and what you have to offer them; otherwise they will take their hard earned money elsewhere. If you run an interior design company or if you craft incredible bespoke pools tables, you need to make this shine through on your site. Otherwise, your prospects will sit there thinking “Fantastic design services? Pull the other one, you can’t even get your own website design right!” There, you have just lost a potential sales opportunity and you haven’t even had the chance to speak to them yet.

Now, given just how important this first impression is, where does web design now sit on your list of priorities? I’d imagine that if you haven’t addressed it already, you may at least be tempted to give it a bit of extra thought, but whom do you turn to?

This is where design gets murky. For those business owners and entrepreneurs out there who have never fully engaged with online marketing and site design before, it can be a confusing arena to be in. Do you use flash? Java? XHTML? CSS? A combination of all of them? The trouble is many people don’t have the first idea. This is where the disconnection between graphics and the underlying technology come into play.

Many people marketing a small business will be tempted to go for the cheapest marketing options possible. Why? Because they think it will provide the highest ROI. This is a problem when they are potentially buying into something that they don’t understand particularly well.

This opens the door for anyone that wants to call themselves a web designer. Just because an eighteen year old played around with some HTML in college, it doesn’t mean to say they can provide you with a quality website that will genuinely add value to your business. By the same token, anyone that’s savvy with Photoshop can make an exciting website design, but that doesn’t mean to say they can actually make it work. Can you see gap? This is the gap you will need to fill if you decide to hire someone cheaply who has in incomplete skill set.

To develop a website that generates that WOW effect whilst simultaneously working flawlessly requires experience and a much wider arsenal of digital skills. A designer that also understands the complexities of the underlying coding and web technologies will be able to produce a great looking website that will be simple to manage, easy to use and most of all it will probably work.

If this individual also has sales and marketing experience, they can also design a website that will not only look good and work well for the end user, it will also be able to drive sales and influence the prospect’s decision. This is what ‘design’ really is, a creative work with an ulterior motive. In this case, that motive is to make you more money.

To illustrate this point, consider this. Have you ever visited a website that looked fantastic, did all kinds of crazy things and then after leaving, you remember it for being incredible? I bet you have seen a few and you may even be tempted to build one for yourself. I’ll also bet it was developed mainly in flash. There are implications with this however. A website developed entirely in flash will barely exist to the search engines. It’s nothing personal; it’s just that Google and the like simply do not understand it. Now, if you were looking for a particular product or service but didn’t have a brand in mind, where do you turn? I go to Google every single time, and where does this leave your flash based website? Lost in a digital sea of virtual clutter.

If the person designing your flash site had any marketing experience, this wouldn’t have happened. Why? Because apart from providing you with a fantastic website, they will also want to ensure your target audience actually sees it. This is because it’s the reason you wanted this website built in the first place and because all good designers want the world to see their work and give them a pat on the back. Otherwise all that time and investment will have been for naught.

The trouble is that many SME marketers and business owners don’t always appreciate this and they expect the product to sell itself, web design is just web design to them. Try to think about it this way, if you’re proud of your product and you have a lovely showroom or office that showcases this wonder that you have to offer the market, why should it be any different online? Marketing communications have to be consistent and must set customer expectations, so if you love your product in real life, love it online and show it the attention it deserves.

How can you do this?  Consulting with a digital marketing agency  is a good start. They will have seen all the pitfalls before and they will be able to advise you on how to WOW your prospects whilst making sure you get the maximum visibility possible. It’s a bit like buying walking boots. Buy some cheap ones and they’ll likely fall apart and cause you endless amounts of pain. Invest a little bit more and buy a good pair, and they will serve you well for years to come.

This is why we here at Generate UK are so good at what we do. We get to understand your key business drivers and motivations so that we can leverage the correct skills and technologies to deliver you results and opportunity. We understand the day-to-day pressures faced by SMEs and that is why our clients come back to us time and again. So before you do yourself some mischief by hiring the wrong person for the job, pop in and have a chat with us so we can steer you in the right direction. Stop fighting fires, start making money.