Click Consult - Internet Marketing

user friendly websites

Sometimes A New Web Design Is The Answer

posted on: June 9th, 2010

For some websites, the original web design may have been considered long ago, and the needs of the company and its customers have long since changed. In other cases, the initial web development was poorly thought out and was not as successful as it should have been in meeting the needs of visitors. Problems like these can go unnoticed for quite a long time before being discovered, and some may never come to light. This can have a negative effect on business, so it is worth assessing a website and thinking about making possible changes, or even commissioning a different design, if this will help to fulfil its potential. Although professional usability testing experts are expensive, it could be worth hiring them in order to test a website, before deciding whether a website redesign is necessary. If money is not available for this, there is always the option of testing the site oneself, and this is not as complicated as it might seem. The US usability guru, Steve Krug, maintains that even testing a site with just one person is better than not testing at all. Ideally, sites should be tested very early on in the development process, but if this has never happened, it is better done later than never. If the design is found to be problematic for visitors then a new version that is more user-friendly might show a substantial increase in traffic and sales. At internet marketing agency Click Consult, we can redesign your website so that it meets visitors' needs and increases the success of your business.

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Conventions In Web Design

posted on: May 5th, 2010

Web design conventions comprise the common and popular ways in which sites are laid out and structured. They are extremely important in helping visitors to use websites, because they allow previous experiences to be brought into play. This minimises any learning that would otherwise be required to use a site, and helps to give a 'user-friendly' feel. Web development experts know that visitors have certain expectations on arriving at a site. Often, traditional elements of design are useful in a practical sense. For example, once a link has been clicked it may change its appearance in some way, perhaps turning from blue to purple. Those words which are underlined are expected to be links. A list of headings on the left of the page is assumed to be a navigation menu, while familiar phrases such as 'contact us' lead to pages where the visitor can be fairly sure in advance what information they will find there. The loading time of certain pages or files is generally expected to be conveniently quick, with some kind of progress monitor being displayed on screen. Going against these conventions might be tempting for artistic reasons but unless any new arrangements are highlighted clearly enough for users to recognise them, the result is likely to be baffling. It might be better to start with the traditional elements of a site and tweak them creatively rather than throw them out altogether. At Click Consult we build our websites on firm foundations that recognise the importance of web marketing and design conventions.

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