EXPERT'S CORNER: New Year Resolution – Re-design your website! 01-12-2005

No matter how small or large your business is, you can profit enormously from a website. 65% of Internet users in the U.S. do not shop at a poorly designed site even if it is their favorite brand. And, a number of studies have shown that as much as 75% of potential customers abandon their online shopping cart before they have consummated a purchase.

Reduced advertising costs alone are worth establishing a website. Imagine your thick product catalog being reduced to only a few order pages and the rest all online and always up to date. Pictures, product descriptions, newly won awards, customer questions and even instruction videos are possible on your own website. And whenever you feel like announcing a special deal or sale, you simply update your website any time of day.

Your website is a marketing tool that represents your company, your employees and your products. It can be a personality that portrays a positive or negative image or emotion. A website communicates directly with the people who could turn out to be your customers

Your website can have a wide range of advantages that include:

* Unlimited hours of business operation
* Reduced staff costs
* Up-to-date information availability
* Potential for a large customer base
* Online sales of products

Why Re-design a website?

Sites should be updated regularly, have new features added, and by far have working links. However, as your site grows it soon outgrows its foundation; leading to an unorganized use of content, poor usability, and eventually chaos. A re-design is a perfect opportunity to take an inventory and put things back on track.

New foundation: By understanding what it is people are looking for from your site you will be able to better position that information within the architecture of your entire site.

Home Page design: By making an outstanding first impression with a crisp, clean, professional look the user gets a sense of trust from the company behind the site.

User friendly: Your site could have the exact information a specific user is looking for. However, if it takes too long for them to locate it chances are they will go somewhere else to find the information. By making your site as user friendly as possible you will be able to guide the user to specific areas of content.

New experience: New features can dramatically improve the user experience. Online calendars that allow a user to register for events are a perfect example of how a simple feature increases the value of a site.

Getting better results: The simple fact is that you have a site. Why not make it work harder and do more for you and your company by adding features to your site that help educate your user base, enhance marketing efforts, as well as develop a sense of who your users are?

Future customers: The whole goal of a re-design is to create a better experience for your users. Maybe it is a new look, a revised navigation scheme, or a complete overhaul. Whatever the outcome, your site should reflect the company behind the site and insure a sense of trust with you future customers.

The re-designing process:

Realizing the importance of a website update and redesign, it is imperative to invest your time and effort in materializing the task. A website designer can achieve the results your desire. The points you need to consider while re-designing your website include:

Evaluate your existing site: A thorough analysis of your current website in terms of functionality, design and content; its success and failure; should be done. After the analysis, a future goal should be defined.

Sitemap: Make it easy for your visitors. Provide them with all kinds of navigational help. If visitors are able to find information on your site quickly, they will surely come back. Sitemaps are an extended form of navigational aid wherein you display the website structure with links to major sections and sub-sections.

Target audience: Specifically decide your target audience. A brief study on why the customers visit your website, where do they come from etc. would help create a better website.

Theme/Look/Feel/Content: Relevant graphics, authentic content, client testimonials that further enhances the trust and credibility of the organization, fresh updates of news, articles and events, soothing colors etc. that entices the customers to come back again and again.

SEO topping: Businesses faced with slower sales and tighter budgets have discovered this major marketing revolution called Search Engine Optimization and in many cases put all their marketing resources into building market share via better Search Engine rankings. Your website ranking in search engines is a key metric to evaluate the effectiveness of your website and the profitability of your business.

Hiring the right firm to re-design: Last but definitely not the least is hiring the right professionals to redesign your website. Building or re-designing a website is best done with a team that includes both technical experts as well as creative designers. A team can synergize their abilities and create a much better site for you.

Your website is your signature on the Internet. It is often the only way for people to evaluate whom you are and what you have to offer, and your profits depend on the quality of your site. It’s time to make that resolution for 2005 and empower yourself with a newly re-designed website!

Web Design Studio offers design and development, on-going maintenance, e-mail marketing, e-Commerce, database programming and search engine optimization. If you are looking for a free quote for your project or a SEO web site analysis, contact the team at Web Design Studio. Sonny Gupta, President & CEO of the Raleigh-based firm, can be reached at (919) 424-3877 or sgupta#webdesignstudio.com *

(* Please replace '#' with '@' while sending mail)