Brainstorm Design Blog

Website designers seem to be two a penny these days. Whenever I go to networking meetings of any description, there are a few financial advisers, a few accountants and just about everyone else seems to be a website designer.  If you are considering a career in website design, be aware, the jobs market is saturated with them.

But what exactly is a website designer? All the most skilled website designers I have come across are actually graphic designers with a background in print. They sometimes need assistance with making the transition as design elements that work with print won't necessarily work on the web. This is not a problem as a user experience consultant can help them bridge that gap by explaining what the constraints of a computer experience are. Generally speaking, website designers are from a creative background rather than a programming background, whereas the person building the site, the web develop is from a programming background. The developer will usually have experience of web programming languages and website usability.

Unfortunately, website design has a rather bad name these days as anyone who has a copy of photoshop and dreamweaver and a PC in their spare bedroom thinks they can design a website. Unfortunately, they can't, and I see the results every day. Websites that are impossible to navigate, text that is difficult to read, and code that has not been optimised for the search engines. Using an unqualified web designer may not cost you a lot of money, but they will cost you your reputation: a site that no one visits and that puts off existing visitors is not exactly an advertisement for your business. If you are looking to hire a website design company, make sure you follow the following three rules:

1.  Does the website designer have a graphic design background? Make sure you see their portfolio before making a decision.
2. Does the website designer understand the issues of website usability? Is there a user experience consultant available to test the website and  ensure it conforms to minimum usability standards?
3. Does the web developer have a web programming experience or are they just someone who knows how to use dreamweaver? A qualified web developer should understand how to optimise a website for the main search engines and ensure that it follows Google's guidelines.

Remember, your home page is the shop front for your business, so it's worth hiring a professional when building your website.

This morning I participated in a forum discussion on a recurring subject: Should you exchange links with other businesses?

It's a well known fact that a large number of inbound links to your site can improve your search engine ranking. Google views a high number of links as a "vote of confidence" in your site. What is less well known is that Google also looks at the relevance of the links to your site. e.g. If you are a construction company, it may be helpful for you to have inbound links from an architect and surveyor. But it won't make much difference if the link is from an online jeweller.

My advice is that ultimately, it is quality rather than quantity that counts. Better to have a few high quality relevant links to your site than a large number of random businesses linking to you. So be wary of those spam emails that offer link exchanges.

I found the following brilliant tip on www.bmyers.com about how to exploit Google Adwords in order to get noticed by employers. I thought I'd share it with you...

Alec Brownstein had the same problem, but found a solution.

He purchased Google adwords with the keywords being the full names of people he wanted to get interviewed by.

For example, he purchased a google adword for the name 'Ian Reichenthal'.

The ad cost him $6.00, and if Ian Reichenthal searched Google for his own name, this ad would appear at the top of the search results.

"Hey Ian Reichenthal - Googling yourself is fun.  Hiring me is fun too"

If the ad were clicked on, it went directly to Alex's web page, telling why he would be a great hire.

Alex purchased five of these google adwords - one for each person he wanted to interview with.

Four of the executives who Alex bought adwords for, contacted him, resulting in four job interviews.

And one of them hired him.

Total cost to Alex - $30 for the Google Adwords.

It was recently reported that Google has started ranking webpages by the speed with which they load.

If you're serious about selling online, be sure to make it easy for the customer to make the buying decision

You may think this is all common sense, but so many web sites miss all six of the items on the above list.
 
They have too many distractions on their sales pages, they have complicated offers, they leave questions unanswered, they  surprise you with hidden charges, then require you to fill out a multipage order form.

Make no mistake, the new iPad will change the face of wireless computing. 

Bill Myers has recently highlighted a website called http://www.peopleofwalmart.com - not much to this site, just photos of people shopping and a comment about their choice of clothing.

But the site caught on, and now gets almost 4 million page views a day.

Following on from this, Bill Myers has now created a short 4 minute video showing the step by step process to duplicate the http://www.peopleofwalmart.com web site, using free software and $7.95 monthly hosting.

Using the free website, http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com , just enter a web site address and you quickly discover if the site is really down, or whether it’s something else that's causing the problem.

Another useful (and free) resource is the Internet Traffic http://internettrafficreport.com/

This is an edited excerpt of a longer article that appeared on Bill Myers online - http://www.bmyers.com/

It may be only 2 days into 2010, but anything on your web site with last year's date (2009) can already appear old and outdated. Make sure copyright dates on your site are up to date. The same is true with any files containing dates.

Go through the date references in all your online articles, sales pages, press releases etc. and make sure they are up to date.

If you are running an e-commerce site, make sure the selection list of credit card expire dates has 2009 removed.

These small changes can freshen the look of your entire site - and keep your site from becoming stale.

This is an excerpt of a longer article that appeared on Bill Myers online - http://www.bmyers.com/