Online by Design, Perth Web Design, Website Design.

Website Development.

There are many elements to consider when creating a successful website and there's definitely and art to getting all this right. The three we'll talk about here are; Good-looking, Useful and Visible.

Good-Looking.

A well designed website presents a powerful image of your company.

Useful.

Something that is easily found, helpful or beneficial and serves a purpose.

Visible.

Can be seen, constantly or frequently in public view, available or accessible.

Good-Looking.

In most cases your website gives a potential customer their first impression of your company and you’ve only got about 5 seconds before they decide whether to click the back button or not. So, you'll understand that its important to make the very best first impression. You don’t need to spend a fortune on a flashy design, but it does need to be clean and working correctly with fresh and interesting content.

This brings us to what I consider the most important part of creating a successful website, the content (the words) or marketing copy. In fact, the content is vital to your website’s success and needs to be our primary focus, influencing every stage of planning, designing and development.

Useful.

Useful means something that is easily found, helpful or beneficial and serves a purpose.

That’s exactly what your website needs to be.

Help people find what they’re looking for, make it interactive and easy to navigate. Lots of website designers talk about following the '3-click' rule. It’s a rule of website design that say’s, 'If you can’t find what you’re looking for in 3 clicks, then it’s just too hard.’ Your website needs to be simple and easy to navigate or people just wont bother with it. Even after a potential customer has decided to stay on your website, they can be lost if there’s any flaw in the site’s functionality and usability and you’ll loose them forever.

Make sure your users can contact you, if not by phone then by email at the very least. Would you buy something from a website which had no contact details?

With such a wide range of different operating systems and internet browsers being used, we need to make sure your website will work on as many as possible, particularly the most popular ones such as Internet Explorer & Firefox and Opera.

Visible.

Can be seen, constantly or frequently in public view, available or accessible.

I probably don’t need to state the obvious but, this is important. Your website needs to be available 24/7 and accessible to anyone (including people with disabilities) who is looking for your products or services.

People will come to your website by way of search engines, recommendations and advertising. They will expect to find out everything they want to know and see good quality photographs of your products before contacting you in person. Google is still the #1 place to be found by potential customers and if you’re website isn't listed on the first page of Google when someone is looking for you, how are they meant to find you?

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“Do a Google search for your products or services. Either you’re on the first page or you’re not. And if you’re not, where do you think your potential customers will go?.”

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

If you want potential customers to be able to find you, its very important your website is search engine friendly. Technically speaking, search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of visitors to your website from search engines via targeted keywords. It takes time and a lot of effort to establish a good website presence. It’s a process of moving up the ranking list and it doesn't happen overnight. The idea is to keep improving your website's SEO to get higher rankings and therefore more visitors to your website. With the increased number of visitors and a website that’s efficient at converting them into real customers, you will have increased sales.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is not something you do after the website is built, its not something that's an 'added extra'. It needs to be build into the website from the very start and at every stage on every page. There’s a whole range of things we can do to help improve your websites ranking or SEO, too many to list all of them here. If you are interested in finding out more, give me a call or send a message, I’d love to help with you.

One thing I will add though. As a business owner, unless you’re interested in all the technical stuff, you really don’t need to get bogged down in all the details. Your time is valuable and better spent on your area of expertise. Get someone else to do it all this stuff for you. Use their knowledge.

Pay per click Advertising (PPC)

One way to guarantee to be on the first page of Google without waiting for your ranking to gradually improve is by using Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Advertising on Google is the quickest and most effective way to get ahead of your competition instantly. It is very simple and it works very very well. There are professionals who specialise in this form of advertising, that can really help your website's visibility. If you are interested in finding out more, give me a call or send me a message, I’d love to talk with you about this.