Website Design for Customers

Yes, believe it or not, your website design should not concentrate on what you want or what you would like to see in your website, but it is about what your customers want from your website and its design. You can get website designers to make great looking website for yourself, however you cannot get customers to visit and re-visit your website just because you have got a great looking website or you cannot convert visitors in customers just because you have a great looking website design. Neither do you need a website that offers a lot of functionality if your customers don’t need that functionality. If you are selling flowers, the functionality your customers desire from your website will be different to the functionality available on a tyre manufacturer’s website. So in simple terms you need to develop a website design and functionality that your customers expect from your type of business.

What should I be aiming at?

Even before you go to a see a website designer to undertake website design for your business, I would recommend that you do your fieldwork.

It would be useful to understand:

• Who your audience is: This probably is the most important step before you go and see a website designer to develop a website for your company. You have to understand who your audience is. Try and estimate who are the people who would regularly come to my website?
• What does my audience expect: once you identify your audience, the next step is to understand what your audience expects from your website design? Understanding this will not only help you understand the path you should take with your website design, but will also help you explain your requirement to your website designer.
• What will bring my audience back: An important aspect of a good website design and a successful website is the ability to bring the visitors back. In marketing terms, it is like customer retention. For any business it is important to retain customer loyalty, similarly for any successful website, the ability to bring back your customers is paramount. Customer loyalty leads to increase in traffic. Look at some of the successful websites around you: amazon.com, Youtube, myspace. The success of these websites is an example of the power of customer retention and referrals. If you analyse the website design of these sites, it is fairly simple but it offers its visitors what they need: products and services that matter to their audience.

If you think through the above points, you will realise that a lot of information is already available to you (especially if you are an established business). Your website in many terms is an extension of your physical business. The above mentioned information should be available to you in terms of corporate knowledge. Talk to your sale people, look at your customer files and your sales pattern, try and source information from your suppliers. For a new business, it could include analysing your competitors.

In conclusion, I would remind you that try and understand your market before you undertake any part of website design or website development process. Without knowing your market you won’t be able to communicate your requirement to your website designer. It is important to go through this process before you start website development instead of re-inventing the loop after your have developed your website and realised after one year that you are not getting enough leverage from your web design. At the end of the day you will only achieve from your website design what you tell your website designer.

Article resource: http://www.sigmainfotech.com.au/articles/designforcustomers.html

Error 404 – Conceal It With Humor!

The message: “Sorry – The requested URL was not found on this server” is the most annoying statement that users encounter while surfing your site. This may be due to the web server’s inability to locate a specific link either because it’s a broken link or because the link address no longer exists.

You can convert the irritability of this error into smile. How? Simply by humoring it up a little. Below I’ve listed some of the funniest 404 errors, tactfully made by webmasters to retain their users smile and not let it turn into a frown. Check em’ out and try spicing up your 404 page with the same trick.

HTML 5 – Are We “REALLY” There Yet?

It doesn’t seem so, particularly after HTML 5 Editor Ian Hickson’s interview in which he evokes that HTML5 will reach its final stages sometime in 2022, which makes 13 years from now!

I’m doubtful if this is even a real life statement made by its originator or is it just a plain joke to play on the ever-changing world of web. We don’t even know if by 13 years from now the name would still be HTML, least we start talking about its innovation and additional features! I was reading Jeff Croft, and loved the statement where he says: “I care about right fucking now. My clients care about right fucking now. Our users care about right fucking now. The only people that really give a damn about two thousand twenty two are people who write timetables for a living.” The one thing he brings about here is to focus on specs and technologies supported by the browsers real people use, not some upcoming tales that are yet to come!

But this remains a fact that however hard we try to ignore, HTML 5 certainly has something in it for us to talk about. No matter they say it’ll release by 2022, but inside our instincts pinch us that it’ll be out and workable soon. That is why the major browsers like Chrome, Opera, Safari and Firefox already support HTML 5, and many serious designers and developers are anxious to dig in their hands and get the most out of the information available on HTML 5. HTML 5 defines the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web, HTML. It’s more of an innovation than an invention, and therefore, it shouldn’t take much time to come to the fore.

For me, HTML 5 might turn into one of the most long awaited event in the history of web design! Now should we just wait and watch for the Show time to begin, or should we try and bring the change now rather than waiting for all these years? What have you to say? Please leave in your valuable feedback.