by Marelise da Silva | Sep 10, 2019 | Website Design
As sales and service move ever more into the online space, it is vital for any business to have a recognisable, attractive and functional online presence. The best way to achieve this is by making sure that your website design is spot on from the very start. Web design that is geared towards great customer experience and brisk sales, should always be based on the four fundamental elements discussed below. Keep these in mind while designing and maintaining your website, and you should have no problems keeping your customers happy.
1. First Impressions Last
It takes between 4 and 8 seconds for a visitor to your site to either become a customer or click away, possibly to a competitor’s site. That is all the time you have to make a good impression! So, you need to make sure that your site is visually appealing and attracts and retains a visitor’s interest. Put a lot of effort into the look and feel of your site and do research to determine what would be most attractive to clients in your particular market.
2. Ease and Speed of Use Is Essential
It may look pretty. But, if it doesn’t work, a frustrated customer will gladly look elsewhere. Not only should you ensure that your website’s various functions are always working properly, but you should also research the design and programming of those functions to check whether they are optimised for customer use. If an element or function is slow or counterintuitive, customers are not likely to be patient and give you the benefit of the doubt.
3. Sales Are Made Through Emotional Connections
You can’t keep your site impersonal and generic and then expect to generate the kind of brand loyalty that comes from good customer experience. Think hard about your brand and how it is presented to customers. Also, be sure to put names and faces to your brand. Team photographs and bios, or endorsements from well-known personalities, can go a long way towards building trust in your brand.
4. Customers Need Information
Don’t let the information on your site get dated. Update it constantly. Keep a blog that you add to on a regular basis, encourage customer reviews on your products so that future buyers have something to refer to. Always make sure that your basic product info is as complete as possible. A major frustration for customers is clicking on a product they may want to buy and seeing no information to help them with their purchase decision.
WSI OMS is a well-established expert in web design. Contact us to assess and discuss your customer experience.
by Francois Muscat | Sep 6, 2019 | Website Design
Creating a great web page is often a delicate balancing act – one that is not always easy to achieve. Not only does the designer want to build a stunning and unique site, but the client also wants to ensure that user experience is simple and profitable, while digital marketers want to stay at the top of the search results. Design, UX and SEO thus sometimes come into conflict, resulting in frustration all around.
All of these factors are important and can be reconciled. SEO has become such a high priority for most companies seeking to build their online presence, and so it is perhaps worth considering the potential conflict from this perspective. SEO experts have cited a number of main factors that frustrate them when it comes to web design. These can be resolved without sacrificing UX or web design. On the contrary, considering these points could create a win-win and ensure that web design and SEO need not be in opposition to each other.
When SEO pros look at a website, they essentially consider five aspects: crawlability, usability, readability, accessibility and findability. Certain popular web design choices can interfere with one or more of these, which makes SEO measures difficult to implement. Here are some of the worst offenders:
– Menu Designs:
The “hamburger” menu, accordion style, confusing dropdown design and mega menus. All of these will make an SEO specialist cringe. Navigation needs to be simplified for a better UX, which will ultimately enhance the site’s SEO standings.
– Decisions That Are Not Based on Data:
A website is not an artwork, it is an interface with your potential customers. A scientific approach is needed, based on analytics and other research.
– Image Sliders:
Image sliders not only look pretty, but they can also be good for UX – provided the user has a really fast connection. Otherwise, it tends to slow down the website and will frustrate your clients and visitors.
– Lazy or Poorly Thought-Out Redirects:
Incorporating the H-hierarchy into design decisions and using the logo as an H1.
The list continues. The point is not to stop web designers from following their creative desires, but rather to persuade them to make their decisions on the basis of analytics, rather than just what looks or feels good. SEO and web design don’t have to be enemies. In fact, they can easily work together – and should do for the benefit of both.
WSI OMS is a well-established expert in web design and SEO. Contact us to discuss your plans for your website.
by Francois Muscat | Aug 5, 2019 | Website Design
If you are reading this article, you have probably been tasked with briefing a web design company for your brand-new website or the redesign of your existing website. Here are a few ideas of what you need to include in the brief:
Web designers will need to know a bit about your company. Include a few paragraphs about the business and your industry, the products you sell, the services you offer, how many people are employed and who your target audience is.
Chances are good that you already have a website. In the brief, include what you like about the website and what you don’t like (such as dated designs or old colour schemes). Let the web designers know when it was designed, by whom and how much traffic you receive each month.
List the goals of your website. Are you trying to sell products online? Or, are you trying to increase brand awareness, for example? Include the demographics of your ideal buyers, the unique selling points of your products and services and a few of your competitors’ websites. List all of the features that you would like on the website, including but not limited to a search box, social media sharing buttons, e-commerce functionalities, galleries, forms, newsletters, a private members section and integration into existing CRM systems.
To guide the designers on the type of design you want, give them any graphics that you want on the site as well as font, style, colours and icons that you want to include. Feel free to include websites that you like with a description of what you like about them. Also consider whether the design should be professional or personal, traditional or contemporary or serious versus lighthearted, for example.
This is just a starting point to get your website project going. If you need web design services, contact WSI OMS today.
by Marianna Muscat | Jul 26, 2019 | Website Design
Developers and designers can work together effectively to literally change the world. Most projects tend to start with design and finish with development. The process can be faced with a massive disconnect whereby designers hand over their designs and anxiously wait to see if developers are going to interpret them the right way. However, this shouldn’t be the case; developers and designers need to board the same team showcasing their different skill sets, roles and strengths. So, how can you make the designer-developer relationship work effectively?
Work as a Team from the Outset
In traditional web design processes, designers handle the initial phases of researching, analysing and developing prototypes without engaging developers. This leaves developers in the dark; something that leads to the designs being pinged over to the developers’ desks with instructions. It is a process that has many problems. Initially, designers will have a dream of a magnificent design, which eventually turns out to be time-consuming, difficult and downright impossible to execute. The developers, on the other hand, feel that they are disconnected from the project. When developers are involved in the design from the outset, they have an understanding of the problems the product aims to solve and the needs of the users. This way, they are able to validate designs and unearth technical issues that may bring problems down the line.
Have Standards
The designers and developers need to have the right knowledge and tools for the job to ensure things are done fast. However, sometimes, a lot of time is wasted on arguing and discussing logistics.
Think of it this way, developers and designers can have lengthy discussions about a WordPress plugin they need to use that can pull together the website design considerations that have technical constraints. This takes a lot of their time, however, when you agree on something, it makes sense to use that plugin as the standard on other forthcoming projects unless it’s not suited for that project. The same should happen for grids, sizes, conventions and margins among other elements of website design. When you standardise the systems and processes, the individuals in the team know what is expected of them. The small stuff won’t bog them down, and they will have more time to concentrate on building a product that will work for everybody.
Create Prototypes
It’s often said showing is better than telling. However, experience trumps all. It is important that the web development team, including the designers, start prototyping in advance. This helps the clients or website owners to understand the ideas of the developers and designers, and user testing can start. Prototyping eliminates misinterpretation and it allows developers to know how they are going to envision the product to function as intended. It is easy for the developers to map out how a website design product needs to be built. In addition, prototyping cements the collaboration between the designers and developers at an early stage.
Review the Final Product Together before Staging
When the website development process ends, the developer and designer should review it together before it goes live. This allows the team members to make any suggestions or ideas for improvement. There are DevOps tools that developers and designers can use to ensure that there is a great collaboration and any changes are worked out as the process goes on.
At the end of the day, developers and designers should be in the same line with no guessing, arguing, assuming, finger pointing or rolling of eyes at one another. If designers and developers aren’t talking in one voice, it can result in friction, which may lead to delay in delivery of the product or spill over into producing a subpar product. Collaboration is a skill that developers and designers have to learn and master, and it will take away the blame game that comes about when things go haywire.
For your website design and development needs, contact WSI OMS now to discuss your options!
by Marianna Muscat | Jul 22, 2019 | Website Design
If you are looking forward to building a new website for your start-up, you need to ensure that from start to finish, the process is handled the right way. Whether you own a hardware store or whether you are a photographer or whether you run another kind of small business, having a great website is very crucial to your success. It may also be that you want to make your current website more effective. In order to achieve this, you will need to have the right team to do the web development process. Here are a few valuable tips to help you create a great small business website:
Choose a Good Domain Name
Also referred to as the website address, a domain name provides the entry point to your website. The domain name is crucial because it makes a good impression for website usability purposes in addition to search engine optimisation. You need to ensure that the name is easy to spell. So, try to avoid the use of slang or highly esoteric words and keep it short. Have an appropriate domain extension like .com; unless it is suitable to use other extensions like .edu, .gov, or .org. You also need to avoid using hyphens and numbers.
Once you have picked the right domain name, you need to purchase a secure, scalable hosting that offers good tech support.
Create a Clear Description of your Brand
You need to let audiences know who you are as well as what you do so that they are not confused when visiting your business website. Create a “hero image” or homepage banner along with other subsequent banners. These will offer a visual representation of the services or products you offer. Ensure you have a nice introductory text blurb placed near the top area of the page describing who you are and the things or products and services you offer. Ensure you have a footer and main navigation menus with “About Us” page links that are easily accessible to audiences. This allows visitors to read more about your brand or business.
Have the Best CMS
A content management system (CMS) is an application or software programme used to create as well as manage your digital content. Having a good CMS helps you to maintain your site properly without the need of having the technical knowledge. Get a CMS that best suits your unique website needs. This is crucial because different CMSs are used for different purposes like extensibility, user-friendliness and budget. You can use a CMS like WordPress, which is the most popular and has many useful plugins. If you are worried about your website security, you can consider a different CMS like Drupal, which is considered more secure than WordPress.
Optimise Your Site for Search Engines
For your site to be indexed by the search engines and rank well on SERPs, you need to build a strong SEO strategy. Some of the most effective SEO practices include the following:
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- Use of the right keywords
- Optimal website coding
- Ensuring fast loading speeds
- Installing SSL certificates and ensuring the website is secure
- Having a mobile-friendly website
- Building high-quality backlinks
- Getting positive reviews online from sites like Yelp, Google and Facebook
- Building internal links
- Using social media
Create and Publish Superior Content – Regularly
Content is king in online business. People are searching for content that is informative, interesting and that grabs their attention. You can publish blog posts, quality articles, social media comments and other kinds of content to help drive traffic to your site.
Video content is also an ideal way of advertising and marketing your brand. Use content that has an on-brand tone and makes people enjoy reading it so that they can share it.
Use Webmaster Tools
Small business website owners need to analyse the data received from their traffic as well as the site performance. They can install tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics. The tools can track information like daily and weekly visitors to the site and the number of page views. They also determine the bounce rate or the percentage of visitors coming to the site and leaving after only viewing one page. Other elements that webmaster tools can check are broken links on the site, the average time visitors spend on a site, crawl errors and website downtime.
When you follow these steps and tips, you will have a highly functional and effectively performing website that not only attracts leads, but that will also convert them. Talk to our experienced team of web designers at WSI OMS to find out how you can have your website up and running in no time at all!
by Francois Muscat | May 27, 2019 | Website Design
There is a great quote by Steve Forbes that says: “Your brand is the single most important investment that you will make in your business”. Here are the most critical commandments of brand design:
Beautiful
Great brand design is easy to look at – and you need to look successful to be successful. Having an elegant, contemporary design is what consumers of today expect. A homely, amateurish, ugly brand design is going to turn people off and it won’t help you build a business.
Simple
The world is way too noisy and complicated, and people are inundated with a large amount of visual stimulation. Everyone is looking for simplicity in their lives. If you make your brand design simple, you will make it easier to be remembered and easier for others to communicate what you offer and what you do.
Strategic
Strategy is a plan for a pattern of decisions. Hope is not a strategy. You need to plan the work and work the plan. There is no execution without a strategy and there is no strategy without a vision.
Communicate
All strategic branding is, is communication. You need to communicate who you are, what you do, how you do it and how you do it differently. Branding is communicated through images, colour and through verbal or written communication. You can use these three elements to tell a story, which is much more memorable than facts or figures.
Need help with your web design or digital marketing? Then contact WSI OMS today.
