Healthy Web Design.

When it comes to web design for your business website, what picture do you conjure up in your mind? Talented artistic people working hard to create a visual masterpiece, using sophisticated graphic design software? Well, you’re not entirely wrong, only about 99% off.

Most people think of “web design” as almost a synonym for “graphic design”. This is really a very unfortunate association, mainly because it lowers your expectations, and grossly understates what you should expect from your business website. Now consider the expression “structural design”. Conjures up a completely different perspective, doesn’t it? The fact of the matter is that you need a structural designer for your online business presence far more than you need a pretty face for it, in the same way that you need an architect and structural engineer to design your business office, and a business manager to build your business, far more than you need a painter to make it look good, or an advertising business to help create a positive public perception.

Every aspect of your business is important in some way or other, it’s just that some aspects are more important. The problem of course is that you would never build your business premises from cardboard and then just paint it nicely so that it looks great from the front. Of course, the first customer that walked in would balk at the lack of depth of your business, and walk very quickly back out again.

It is exactly the same when building your online business presence. Absolutely, your business website should look great. After all, if it is not attractive and professional, people are going to be just as wary of dealing with you. That said, your website needs robust and solid structural design if you want potential customers to come in, look around, pick up and test your merchandise, have a cup of coffee, chat to your salesman, and make an informed and satisfactory purchase.

The days of an online brochure with a nice contact form and slick design doing the job for you are long gone. For someone to buy your business, they want to query your product database for the perfect product option. They want to search your store for relevant advice and product information, chat to other people in the market and interact with you as the business proprietor. If opening the door makes your business premises fall down, that’s as far as anybody will get.

So what does that mean when selecting a “web designer”? Simply, it means don’t look at how pretty their work is as 100% of your decision criteria — you are not looking for a graphic designer. These are some of the things a “web structural designer” should be able to bring to an effective online business:

* A solid foundation — your business website should at a minimum include an easy-to-use content management system and database.

* User registration and management facilities — if you don’t know who your customers are, you cannot communicate regularly with them

* Product database — this is your storeroom, without which you simply have nice pictures on a cardboard cutout as your product display.

* E-commerce capabilities — your customers should be able to buy from you online as easily as they can offline, otherwise they may as well visit a store close to them.

* Customer communication tools — newsletter functionality, online surveys and feedback forms are all effective and important ways of making the one-way internet medium into a two-way communication environment.

* Automated online promotion capabilities — this is a newer feature that most probably would not think of. The tasks associated with submitting your pages to search engines, optimizing your urls to be search-engine friendly, and many other SEO tweaks are increasingly time-consuming aspects of keeping business websites up to date. Many of these tasks, such as Google Sitemaps submission, url creation based on the title and content of the page, and relevant meta tag generation, to name a few, can all be automated into the design of your website’s core programming. Including them up front will save you countless hours and money trying to accomplish these tasks manually.

At the end of the day, your business website should look good. Much more importantly, it should be the most structurally sound and efficient aspect of your business if you make full use of it’s potential. Make sure your designer is coming from a systems engineering and programming design perspective, not just a graphic design paradigm, and you’ll have a business website that not only looks good, but also works tirelessly as hard as you do.

David Malan is an internet and e-commerce expert with over ten years experience in designing and developing enterprise grade online solutions for business.

He owns and runs RealmSurfer Consulting, based in Perth, Western Australia.

Website: Web Design Perth
About: About RealmSurfer Web Design Perth

After working with web design companies, agencies and firms, I have found the following 7 steps will lead you to a much happier and fruitful relationship with your next web designer:

1. Never shop on price.Whilst you don’t always get what you pay for. You almost never get what you expect if you aren’t willing to pay properly for it.
2. Pay careful attention to the portfolio of the website designer.What they have done is a good indication of what you will get. In addition, look at the web designer’s own website. Avoid web design companies that still use flash introductions on their own website.
3. Give a small project first.If you plan to spend a lot of money with the company, try giving them a small project first. If their service and quality of product is what you expect, they will deliver on their promises and you can move onto bigger things with that company. If they don’t deliver, then you haven’t wasted huge sums of money.
4. ALWAYS define exactly what you need before the project begins.Like it or not, a project plan with specifications is going to save a lot of trouble later on, both for you and the design company. The specifications do not have to be four hundred pages long, but they should define any important features that could otherwise be ambiguous.
5. Meet the teamHave a conversation with the project manager and make sure that you get to speck to the whole team that will be working on the site, or at least meet them. A good project manager should be able to convey your requirements to the team properly, but good project managers are uncommon. You’ll be safer if you can have a chat to everyone involved in one meeting. Getting everyone to take notes and thus ensuring that the team as a whole has an understanding of what you are trying to accomplish; straight from the horses mouth.
6. Ask for references and/or testimonials.This may or may not be possible depending on the web design company. But if they are more than willing to let you speak to other clients, then more than likely their previous clients like them, which is a good sign.
7. Due diligence.The level of due diligence that you perform on the company should of course be kept in check with the size of the job you intend to have them do for you. If you are getting them to do a $250 online greeting card, getting 10 references, having 4 prior meetings and asking for a 100 page specification is likely going to cause you to be tossed aside in favour of a client that is worth the trouble.

   On the other hand, if you are having them build the next major shopping portal for you group of 185 country-wide chain of stores and plan to have it intergrate with the services of several large companies, be absolutely sure the web design company knows what they are doing and has experience doing it. You don’t want a company that is learning the ropes by using you as a guinea pig.

I hope that armed with this information you will be able to make an informed choice on which web design company, agency or firm you will use on your next project.

Nicholas Edwards is co-founder of web-design.articles-reports.com. The site is dedicated to building better web design through understanding. For more articles on web design go to web-design.articles-reports.com.

Today, there are literally millions of options to choose. A business website can be free of cost to thousands of dollars. The project process can range from a few hours to several months. Most importantly, your business image may appear poorly amateur or, preferrably, very professional. With this wide spectrum of results, how do you determine which web design company is right for you? To ease this search, below are 20 questions to ask web design companies. It will separate the real result-getters from the rest.

1. How many years have you been building websites? Usually, a company with more years of experience is preferred over the other. However, a more relevant question is whether the company is still technologically up-to-date and designing websites according to tomorrow’s standards.
2. What is the largest project you have worked on and why? A company with well known clients generally is more credible.
3. Where can I see samples of your previous work? A company with an online portfolio is able to display past projects to the public.
4. What industries have you created websites for? A company that is familiar with your industry can be very beneficial.
5. How do you measure success of your websites? Some measure it by the website design. Others measure it by the amount of incoming traffic. It all depends on what the client wants out of the website.
6. Do you have a formal project process? A company that has developed a process will be more organized and easier to follow.
7. What do the clients have to provide? Usually clients will have to provide the text, images, and feedback. If the client cannot provide these, ask if the web design company offer services to buy stock photos and copywriting.
8. How do we communicate about this project? Communicating by email is usually more convenient and more effective, however, a client can address their needs better by telephone.
9. Do I own the code after completion of the project? Make sure the answer is YES. You paid for the codes therefore you should own it.
10. How long will it take? A typical small business website takes up to a month. It usually depends on how involved the client is.
11. How much will my project cost? There is usually a base package. For example: A five page website costs $1,000. Additional pages costs $100 each.
12. What is the payment structure? There is usually a down payment of 33%. Another 33% is due usually during development phase. Final payment is due when the website goes live online.
13. What softwares do you use? Companies that use softwares such as Dreamweaver, Frontpage, GoLive, or in-house application tend to complete the project faster. However, hand-coded websites tend to have cleaner codes. This is not all too important but it is nice know.
14. Are your codes clean and according to open standards? A clean-coded website loads up quicker. Also, clean-coded websites are more portable if you ever decide to switch to another web design company in the future.
15. What browsers do you test the websites on? Testing should be done at minimum on the following browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Netscape.
16. I want Flash animation. Can you provide that? Flash animation can add an extra edge to a website. Too much will hurt.
17. Do you provide hosting? Companies that can provide this will usually give you a discount for having them design your website.
18. Do I have to host my website with you? The answer should be NO. If their web hosting ever becomes unreliable, you should have the right to have your website hosted elsewhere.
19. Are you able to create online shopping carts? If you plan to do e-commerce in the future, a web design company should have the resources to provide this service.
20. How will my website be maintained? Ask for web maintenance plans if you don’t want to deal with the codes. If you want to cut down on cost, ask if the website is compatible Macromedia Contribute

    Ly Nguyen is a web producer at Bicdream Studio, a web design firm devoted to creative web strategies. For additional FREE resources, visit http://www.bicdream.com/resources