Choosing a web designer that suits the needs of your business is a crucial part of creating a successful website.

One of the most important things to look for is a designer that takes the time to get to know your business. A big part of our website design process is learning. You need to provide your designer with all of your marketing materials– brochures, flyers, logos, etc.

You also want a web designer that is receptive to criticism and willing to take your input into consideration. Your site needs to be uniquely YOU; it is an important extension of your business. We always tell our clients that we are building THEIR website. So if they don’t like something about the designs we come up with, they should say so. We aren’t here to get our egos fed; we are here to design a website that is going to help your business succeed.

As far as experience levels, you want a designer that has experience with…
- Web design. You want to go with an experienced firm because they know the whole process, and they understand important things like website usability standards and cross-browser compatibility.
-Programming. If you want any kind of interactive quality to your site like forms or administrative back-ends, you you’ll need a web designer with experience in a web programming language such as PHP or ASP.
-Graphic design. Typically, you have web designers that are good at programming and web designers that are good at graphic design. It is rare to find one person that is superior at both so make sure you go with a company that has a programmer and graphic designer. Because building your website is an important part of building your brand, you also need someone who understands formats that are not just web-based so that they can convert the look for your current materials to your website or vice versa.
-Search engine optimization. A lot of web designers don’t design with the search engines in mind. But it will save you lot of aggravation when you are trying to market your site if you have a designer that understands SEO best practices. Sites that are too graphically intense or all flash tend to not rank well in search engines. So unless you are a high profile business that has already built their brand like Chanel, you will need someone who understands how to get you to rank for keywords in your target area. You may have a really cool-looking design but what good is your website if no one can find it?

If you are interested in hiring a web designer to build your company’s website or just to improve it, mention this blog entry and get a free web consultation when you contact us!

We usually find that business owners, especially small business owners, seem to work very locally within their markets and don’t think about exposing themselves to the larger audience that the web can draw in for them. And while they are limiting themselves, they continue to do business offline because the prospect of building a website is overwhelming or confusing to them. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.

So what do you need to get started building a website? Let’s talk about some of the real basic concepts that we need to understand. This is how we break it down for our clients– think of it in terms of building a house.

• The first thing you need is SPACE to put your house– some “land.” In the web world, the space to store your website is called hosting. A web host runs servers, which are computers connected to the internet at high speeds 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These computers can be accessed by anyone who has an internet connection all over the world.
• You also have an address so people know where to find you. For your website, you will have a web address, or domain name. This would be something like www.goebelmedia.com or www.google.com. Dot com’s, net’s, and org’s are generally better for SEO and since they are running on short supply nowadays, it is important to buy your domain right away. The cost is cheap, around $10/month. We find the best place to buy domain names is at www.GoDaddy.com.
• Typically, you aren’t going to design your own house so you would need an architect– or for your website, a web designer. You are going to need a web designer with experience not only with web design but ideally with programming, graphic design, SEO, and internet marketing.
• Your house is the actual site design. This is code, typically HTML, that will be place on the hosting, or the land, at the domain, or the address. Just as there are certain critical elements of a house, there are some things you definitely want to include on your website. You want to make sure you have your logo and slogan in a prominent place on your site. You also want to include ways for your customers to contact you, and ways to convert traffic into sales. You could add a sales component to your site or include “lead forms.” It is also important to include analytic tracking code on your website so you can understand where your customers are coming from, how they found you, and how they are navigating through your site.
• Finally, if you buy a house, you have to maintain it. The same goes for a website. It will turn a customer off if your website always looks the same and search engines such as Google or Bing prefer fresh content. Think of these updates or design changes as a fresh coat of paint. As far as redesigning your website, I have heard that this should occur every 2 years. For small businesses, we believe that every 5 years is sufficient.

So, that is some of the basic information you need to know to bring your business online.