Don’t hide your phone and email

Plaster your email and phone number all over your website, in large bold type. Also, include contact details for specific members of your team (E.g. account managers, customer services).

Use Skype

Skype is widely use these days. When you create a Skype account you can easily integrate it into your website so people can call or chat with you direct from your contact page.

Use online chat

For a relatively inexpensive monthly fee, you can add a hosted live chat feature on your site. During your chosen office hours, people can click the chat button and it pops up a window where they can talk direct with your team.

Use Google Maps

Google Maps is very simple and easy to use. Create a map of your office for anyone that may visit and embed it on your website.

Add staff photos

People like to put a name to a face. Even if you or your team don’t like the idea of having their mugshots on the “About Us” page, you should do it anyway. People are more likely to get in touch.

To use me in a web project call my on 07843 483 078 or get a free quote online.

The design of your website is important but as I’ve discussed before, a website is more than just good design. In this blog I outline some of the mistakes designers make when designing their site.

So, your website looks pretty but…

…it relies on Flash

There’s nothing wrong with Flash per se but it is blocked in some corporate environments and some mobile devices, such as the iPhone, simply do not support Flash. By all means use Flash but provide alternatives for those who do not have it installed.

…it takes ages to download

In today’s age of broadband it wouldn’t appear to be as critical to make your site fast to download. However, in this era of mobiles phones many people may access your site via a slower 2G or 3G connection. Avoid working large images into the template of your website and make sure all images are optimised for the web.

…I can’t work out how to contact you

Some designers get so hung up in making a site look nice they forget that it should be selling your products or services. The design should make it as easy as possible for potential clients and customers to get in touch with you.

…I can’t use it

To someone blind or partially-sighted, a nice-looking website is of no use to them. Make use of HTML features to make your site accessible to all. Also, don’t flout any conventions when it comes to adhering to usability norms.

…it doesn’t appear on the search engines (or anywhere else)

An aesthetically-pleasing website is of no use if people can’t find it. As well as investing time in the website design be sure to put in the work so people can find it through the various online marketing channels.

To get a website that is more than just pretty call me on 07843 483 078 or get a free quote online.

Some sites are huge. Using a site with a large number of pages can be like negotiating your way through a complicated labyrinth. So here are some tips on how to make a website easier to navigate.

Use a site map

A hierarchical page of links to all the main sections in your site gives the visitor a good overview of how your site is structured. Sometimes you can link to every page but if your site is particularly great in size you may have to leave out individual pages to prevent it from looking confusing.

Include a breadcrumb trail

This term comes from the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the popular fairytale. Its digital counterpart allows the user to track their way back up to the home page. An example of a breadcrumb trail is:

Home > About Us > Board of Directors > John Smith

Make it searchable

Having a search box on your site is a quick and easy way for users to find what they want. If you don’t have the capability to implement your own you can integrate Google’s search into your site.

Use multi-level navigation

As well as having main sections, your site can then have sub-sections. The subsections can be represented on your site via a drop down menu and/or a secondary left-hand sub navigation.

Keep it consistent

One of the golden rules of designing interfaces is to ‘strive for consistency’ (Point one from Shneiderman’s Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design). As well as keeping your design consistent (e.g. having the menu in the same place on every page) you should use standard design elements throughout the site.

Colour code sections

Colour-coding sections will allow your visitors to subconsciously groups pages together. For example, this health and safety website I designed uses green, yellow and red to differentiate the main sections.

To get a website that is easy to navigate call me on 07843 483 078 or get a free quote online.

Take them yourself

It seems like almost everyone has a digital camera these days. Whether it’s on your phone or through a higher-end device, the likelihood is you, or someone in your company, has access to a camera. So, you can taken the photos yourself. The obvious advantages here are you can take as many as you want, whenever you want—and it won’t cost you a penny. However, you do get what you pay for. This option may cost nothing in a monetary sense but if your photos come from an amateur using a budget camera, it may reflect badly on your company and its website.

Use a stock photography website

A stock photography website allows you to download an image taken by a third party for use on your website. Most sites charge per image but a handful are free. Generally though, you can get a good quality photo for next-to-nothing (for example, I recently purchased an image for a client from istockphoto.com for around £2). The downsides here are you rely on the website having the photo you want and there is nothing to stop a competitor using the same image.

Use a professional photographer

The only downside to using a professional photographer is it’s more expensive than the previous two options. Again, you get what you pay for though. In this case that’s professional quality images specified precisely to your website’s requirements—and the guarantee that no one else will be able to use them without your permission.

Tips on using images

1. The adage ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ applies also to website photos. A photo of a product can tell a potential customer a lot more than some lengthy text can. So always use photos to promote your products and services.
2. Avoid clichéd pictures (a smiling woman with a telephone headset springs to mind).
3. While photos are great, don’t overdo them. You should still remember your website has a function that surpasses nice photography (e.g. generating enquiries, selling products online).
4. Don’t use print quality images on your site. An image used in a brochure will be far too large for a website; this will make the page slower to load. Get your web designer to resize all photos to an appropriate web quality.
5. If you do have lots of images to display, make use of open gallery scripts such as Lightbox or Galleria. These prevent your web page from being overloaded with imagery and can add that ‘wow’ factor to your site.

To use me in a web project that makes correct use of photos call me on 07843 483 078 or get a free quote online.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting is where many websites are hosted on the same server. Each server can host many hundreds of websites. Shared hosting is the most economical option but it does have some drawbacks. All the websites on the server share the same top-level settings such as script and mail settings so if you have some bespoke requirements a shared package may not be an option.

Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting has the capability to subdivide your hosting into separate hosting packages. Essentially you can create your own shared hosting packages to suit your needs. The prime use of such hosting is if you want to resell (hence the name) hosting on to your clients. Since reseller packages tend to have more space, bandwidth, etc than their shared counterparts some people opt for a reseller package over a shared one for the extra capacity.

Dedicated server

On dedicated server packages you lease the entire server. Unlike shared and reseller hosting packages the entire server is yours. While this is the most expensive option you can configure the server to meet your needs. So if you want to run any bespoke software, for example, you can do so. Dedicated servers also have huge storage limits and high bandwidth capacities so are suitable for high traffic websites.

Virtual Private Server (VPS)

On a technical level a VPS is the same as a dedicated server. The primary difference is a single server is subdivided into several ‘virtual’ servers. You get all the benefits of a dedicated server but with reduced cost and capacity.

What hosting package do you need?

Unless you are expecting significant traffic (ten of thousands of visitors per day or more) a good quality shared hosting package will be sufficient. While reseller hosting is mainly for web designers who want to add a markup on their hosting they are also useful for companies that have several websites to host. If you have bespoke requirements but feel a dedicated server is too expensive, or is overkill, then a VPS is ideal. For really big projects though, it is worth investing in a dedicated server.

The blog is posted for informational purposes. In practice, any good web designer will take over the sourcing of the server for you and pick one that best suits your site’s requirements.

For help with your website and hosting call me on 07843 483 078 or get a free quote online.

It’s much easier to read a book than it is to read text on a website. As I’ve mentioned many times before website visitors tend to be impatient and scan quickly through content. As a website owner you want to make your site’s content as easy to read as possible. So here are some points detailing how to make your website’s text easy to read.

Avoid low contrast colour schemes

Make sure there is a big difference between your website text and the background of your website. You will notice almost all online magazines and newspapers are very high contrast.

Avoid light on dark colour schemes

Light text on a dark background is difficult for most people to read. Avoid a light on dark colour scheme unless the text on your site is minimal. You can’t go wrong with good old black (or dark grey) on white.

Don’t make your text too small

Although most browsers allow text size to be overridden many of your website visitors will not know how to do this. It’s better to err on the side of caution and have your text slightly slightly too big than too small.

Avoid long chunks of text

Avoid long paragraphs. If it reads like a novel you’ve most likely overdone it. You can make your text easier to read with the use of bullet points and headlines.

To get a website that is easy to read call me on 07843 483 078 or get a free quote online.

The web design budget is of great interest to both parties involved. The client wants to know how much it will cost his or her business and the web designer wants to know whether it’s viable to take the job on.

This can result in a catch-22 situation: the client doesn’t want the web designer ‘stealing’ money from them unnecessarily and the web designer doesn’t want to spend ages writing up a quote for a client only to find out the budget was never going to be sufficient for the project.

So, should you disclose your web design budget?

Let’s say you have a budget in mind. The worry is that if your budget is significantly higher than what the web designer would charge. So, you disclose your budget and the web designer increases his price to match your budget, making him or her extra money and wasting some of yours.

I’m not saying this doesn’t happen but when a reputable web designer asks for a budget what they’re really asking is, is it worth me even considering taking on this project? Usually to win a new web project a web designer must spend considerable time asking the client questions and then writing up a proposal. I always ask for a ballpark price—or range. It’s just to get an idea; it’s not a way to rip you off.

What if you have no budget to disclose? Ask yourself, what is this web project worth to my business? At least get an approximate figure in your mind as a starting point. Unless you’ve got to the stage of signing a contract no one can hold you to it. If you have little or no budget, wait until a time when you do. Trying to get a cheap website built will only cost you more money in the future—and will antagonise any decent web designer.

If the client is honest and the web designer is reputable both parties will benefit from the site if a ballpark price is determined early on.

To get a website call me on 07843 483 078 or get a free quote online.

Don’t make it too long

A long form with lots of fields can be intimidating. If your enquiry form is spiraling out of control ask yourself: do I really need this much information? Usually, a name, phone number and email address are all you should make mandatory. Once you have that information you have enough from them to have a lead that can be followed up. If your form is too lengthy they may never even get as far as pressing the submit button.

Use descriptive/helpful form validation

Form validation means you check the content of the form before allowing it to be submitted. For example, you could validate an email address by checking for the @ sign and that it doesn’t contain any illegal characters. This is a nigh essential part of web forms but it needs to be implemented correctly. If the form cannot be submitted for whatever reason, provide clear and helpful messages so they can correct it. If a form fails to submit too many times the visitor will give up.

Send an auto responder

As soon as the form is filled out send an immediate automatic response to confirm receipt; all it needs to do is let them know that you’ve got the form’s contents. Without this, the visitor is never 100% sure that you got their enquiry.

Respond to the enquiry ASAP

Us website users are an impatient bunch. Generally speaking, if we can’t find what we want right away we tend to go elsewhere. If you receive an enquiry through your website respond to it as soon as possible. A lightening fast response won’t make your company look desperate for business. On the contrary, it will show that you care about your customers—and take pride in your customer service. If you get an enquiry within office hours you should aim to reply within fifteen minutes. If you can reply to people on weekends and evenings then all the better. It likely will give you a good edge over your competitors.

Link to it

Finally, there’s no point having a contact form if your visitors can’t find it. Link to it as much as possible and include a contact option as part of your main navigation.

To use me in a web project call me on 07843 483 078 or get a free quote online.

A content management system (known as a CMS) is a facility that allows a user to manage text, images, etc on their web site without having any web design skills. An example of a CMS is a latest news section on a corporate site. The CMS allows the website owners to add new news items without having to learn the technicalities of web development.

Your search engine position is where your website appears on the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc) for a given phrase. Obviously, the higher you appear, the better. The process of making your site appear higher is known as search engine optimisation (SEO).

Sometimes clients ask to have all their site editable via a CMS. They do so in fear of being lumbered with future bills for amends. Additionally, if you have a CMS you can access this whenever you want; you’re not waiting for a third party. However, making the entire site content managed is not a good idea. One of the keys to designing a good content management system is to only allow a client to edit the areas they really need to. These would primarily be areas where pages would be added (such as a blog) or areas of transient content (such as special offers and events).

So, why is this a bad idea?

Constantly changing content can seriously harm your search engine rankings. There’s a lot of misinformation surrounding the subject. In fact, many people think the more you change content, the more likely they are to rise in the ranks. While this is true of adding new content if you constantly fiddle with the information on a page that ranks well for a particular search term, you may jeopardise its position. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing: a well-meaning client could throw their rankings away if they change information on an important page.

The proliferation of the use of open-source content management systems (such as WordPress and Joomla) has meant more and more people have complete access to their site’s contents. Because of this some clients think they’re being conned if they can change what they want, when they want. For this reason, although these open source products do serve a purpose, they should be used with caution.

So, what is the solution? Pages that rely on search engine rankings should be created by an expert and left to work their way up the search engine rankings. The home page, for example, is the most important page on your site and—for the most part—shouldn’t be editable by a client. As mentioned earlier, CMSs are for publishing additional pages and updating content that is subject to frequent amends.

To use me in a web project call me on 07843 483 078 or get a free quote online.

The similarities

Both web pages and email newsletters are built with a series of technologies know as HTML (which defines the content) and CSS (which defines the visual style). This is where the similarities end though and I will now explain why email newsletters are far more limited.

Layout

Because most email clients (e.g. Outlook) have quite a detailed user interface only a small amount of screen space is dedicated to the the email newsletter itself. For this reason newsletters should be much narrower than a standard web page and should use less complex layouts. Ideally the layout should only be one or two columns. Web pages can be almost twice the width of an email newsletter and as such more creative layouts can be used.

Design

Some email clients only have a limited CSS features set (especially more recent versions of Outlook) which means your options for design are far more limited on an email newsletter. For example, Outlook 2007 and 2010 do not support background images, therefore they should be avoided (Outlook users represent a significant proportion of the market so they should not be dismissed).

Media

Many users block images by default on their email clients so you need to make sure that your email newsletter is legible without images; on web pages this is not an issue.

Flash movies and videos do not work in emails. The closest thing you can use is an animated GIF–which is a very rudimentary form of animation. If you wish to use Flash or video you should link to it from your newsletter, rather than embedding it.

Interactivity

You will also run into issues when using form elements in an email newsletter so, again, these should be hosted on a web page and linked to from your newsletter.

The key to a successful newsletter is keep it simple! If you wish to use any fancy layout, media or interactivity do it on a web page and let your email newsletter be a gateway to that page. If you try to be too clever with your email newsletters you will only guarantee your failure.

For a really great website or HTML newsletter call me on 07843 483 078 or get a free quote online.