Give people the time and date

August 27th, 2008

One often overlooked feature on websites that people appreciate and is fairly easy for web design suffolk to place at the top of your home page is the time and date. Remember about time-zones, as the web is a global medium and people will appreciate the effort. Dates are always a good thing to show when you are involved in e-commerce, as a casual browser might be inspired to buy something when they realise that a birthday or anniversary is looming. They actually probably had no intention of buying anything but a prominent date added by web design suffolk could be just the hook that gets them to purchase something from your shop. This will make them feel good about visiting your useful site and will gain you a valuable sale.

When involved with e-commerce, and a robust safe web design suffolk shopping cart has been built, you then need to to think about keeping your customers informed about what is actually happening on your site. If you are checking bank details, then give them a timer and tell them what the wait is for. Communication needs to be there at all times and should not stop once you have taken peoples money. Email confirmations and invoices are standard with web design suffolk as well as dispatch details. Get your after sales strategy right and your customers will keep coming back.

Keep the exchange rate open for all

August 26th, 2008

Multi currency payments is a real boost for anybody who is selling online and want to attract a global audience. When you consider your own charges and payments you have to make for having on-line payment facilities, it is not much more to talk to web design suffolk and ensure that you can take multi currency transactions - it will actually not turn out to be much more than you are already paying. The real bonus of foreign multi currency payments is that the user can see immediately what the actual charge to them will be - do not ever underestimate how important this is to an online buyer.

This will inspire confidence in your online shop from foreign users and can also give the added bonus of making you look like a much larger organisation than you really are. Currencies will shift around the world and web design suffolk will get a live currency feed to slot into your converter software to make sure your site is always on top of these shifting changes. Your products will always remain to cheap to some and expensive to others, but you will be less likely to lose any sales by being transparency about the international costs.

Give your visitors the big picture

August 25th, 2008

Images are a big part of your website and any site that does not have images will suffer from a lack of visitors. Pictures are expected and web design suffolk always ensure that the sites that they build have lots of them. Once you have sorted out the images that you want and web design suffolk has arranged them in templates so you can have them wherever you wnat - the next logical step is to sort out the copyright situation. This is crucial as pictures that are not your won need permission granted before you can put them on your site. Some you might find across the net are public access, but you must find out before you publish.

The bigger picture when it comes to images is in fact allowing users to see a bigger picture. Some software such as lightbox will allow your pictures when clicked to come to the centre of the screen and allow the rest of the site to darken behind it. This is very effective, but it can incur a cost to buy the software. The best way is to ensure the web design suffolk build you some thumbnails that when clicked will turn into larger images that can be sized down again. Be carefdul your pictures are not to big inthe first instance as they will be slow to load.

Make sure your site is easily contacted

August 18th, 2008

Nearly as important as adding a phone number to a professional site is adding at least one contact address that can be used by all users to contact you and your site. Whether these emails arrive in your own inbox or customer services as encouraged by web design suffolk, or whether they go into a mail queue for your various departments is really irrelevant. the most important thing is that they are there and available for use. Let users contact you no matter what the query or what is on their mind.

More advanced and bigger sites built by web design suffolk create emails for very specific queries such as comments or questions or the ability to get the right query to the right  or department. Examples of good addresses are orders, returns, info, contact, products, technical, - the list can go and on, Posting info about whwre you are based is also a very good step for getting customer truct and the feel good factor.

The Homepage is the key to everything

August 14th, 2008

A good homepage is crucial to the success of any web venture. Its basically a very delicate balancing act between displaying what your are about and what your site can do. Show all of your great stuff for sure, but don’t include everything because web design suffolk are certain that you need to keep a little mystery in the process. Draw the user in and get them to feel comfortable exploring your domain.  Through clever web design suffolk and logical links and button you can create the perfect homepage experience that will keep people coming back.

Let your users feel that they are finding things out via their own intuition and not via cleverly laid out paths that have been laid out well in advance. To all intents and purposes your web design suffolk homepage is your web site, it could possibly be the only link you have to hook your visitors, get it right and riches will follow.

Make sure you have Contact for all

August 11th, 2008

When it comes to successful websites, trust is a very important factor to take into consideration. Nobody will be comfortable or trust your site if you do not have a legitimate contact number or address listed. When web design suffolk put your site together, you will probably get a contact page and they will inform you that you need to put a real contact number and listed address. Also you will need to have an email contact number for people who need to contact you.

When adding a contact email address, it is important that you take web design suffolk pointers and make it something like info@. This will be generic enough to keep your users happy, but general enough to put on a separate email account.

Legally, it also paramount that you instruct web design suffolk to place a contact business address and refund contact if you are selling products or services on-line. Remember its good to talk on-line with your users.

Keep your company identity out in front

August 6th, 2008

Having your own style and identity on-line is crucial to long term success. Once you have a web presence and you have a site bulging with content, after discussions with web design suffolk you will undoubtedly know that it is crucial that you get your own style and identity. A lot of deign companies overlook point sizes, make sure your sites point sizes are fair to the content on your site and the reader.

Make sure that when people are updating content to your site, that you set some rules for style and presentation. This might sound very boring and big brother, but it is crucial that the fonts, points sizes and and image specs are all uniformly the same.

It is also very important that you avoid techie terms such as IP and URL etc, as these acronyms might confuse or scare your users. Web design suffolk would understand these terms, but would Mr Jones from Cardiff? probably  not. Remember the KISS method - Keep it simple stupid.

Get to the point and get there fast

August 5th, 2008

As most people know, in the web world, you only have just a couple of seconds to get your users hooked. Therefore you only have one to two sentences to get them hooked and hooked fast. Spelling is the first thing you should look at. Would you want to purchase a product from a site that has bad spelling?

Secondly, you must catch peoples eyes quickly - web design suffolk have made you a site, but it is up to you to get the content right. Flowery prose is a real no, no and your text should be crisp and clear at all times.

Ambiguity has no place on a website that works. Finally always ensure that your images are correctly titled and your products descriptions are succinct and informative.

Dispense with the ‘flash’ intro’s

August 4th, 2008

Most web observers will tell you, including web design suffolk, that you only have a few seconds to attract a new users attention and convert them either into a consumer or a site fan. If this is that case, do you really want to to force your new users into watching a flash intro? A flash into is not always a complete no-no though, it can be used as an optional device for people to choose to see it. That way it wont annoy and the people who like a little bit of flash can get it.

Broadband now means everyone can see flash animation at the correct speed and resolution, but if it is stopping you achieving sales and turning users away,  then you really need to think again whether it should be on your site.  Intros can impress and motivate people, but 30 seconds of somebodies life is a lot to ask on a question iof design faith and subjectivity, If there is no business case for having a flash intro, don’t have one.

Don’t miss the free ride

August 2nd, 2008

When you sign up with an internet provider, you will most probably be given some free web pace. Most people ignore this free gift, but it could quite easily host a small website. The only downside is if you switch providers, then you would of course lose your web space and the address.

Many sites will give you free space though and web building tools, the downside will be lots of banner ads and pop-ups, but hay, its free. The last problem with free web space is that you will get a web name with the providers name in the address and this just doesn’t look professional. There is a lot to think about, but ultimately a free gift should not be ignored out of hand.