Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Web Design Strategies for Businesses

The website of a business is like an image of the company. A customer should enjoy visiting a business' website to ensure that they can visit again. Unfortunately not all businesses have websites that are attractive and efficient to give the customers a good impression. This is why a serious business must employ the web design strategies for businesses in order to give the customers the desired impression when they visit the business' website. Her are the strategies that should be employed when designing a website for a business:

1. Make the website simple
A business website is meant to serve all kinds of customers. The website should be simple to ensure that all the customers get the information or services that they need easily. A simple website that can be used by most customers without any problem is important for a business.

2. Pick a theme and stick to it
A business website should have a single theme that can easily be recognized by anyone who has ever visited the site. Changing the theme every time will confuse the customers. A business' website is an image of the business, hence changing it may make the customers feel like they are visiting an entirely different company every time they want something from your business.

3. Use quality font and graphics
Fonts that are appropriate to business should be used in a business website. The font used should look professional. Quality photographs and graphics are also equally important. Irritating pop-ups with bright colors will definitely drive away some customers. Good graphics on the other hand will keep a customer exploring the website for longer.

4. The products should be put on the forefront
The main function of a business website is to market the products. Therefore ensuring that the websites customers see the products is top among the web design strategies for businesses. Showcasing the products offered by a business will help to increase the sales volumes.

5. Easy navigation
It should be easy to navigate around a business website. Therefore the website should be well organized to ensure that the customers get all the contents of the website without struggle. The visitors should be able to 'move' around the website easily.

6. Creativity with the website content
This web design strategy for business is important as far as marketing the business is concerned. The wording of the text used in the website should aim at convincing the customer to purchase goods or services offered buy the business. Creative text on the website will not only keep the customer on the website for a long time but convince them to purchase a product. Open source web content management systems are the suggested method in dealing with this aspect.

7. Checking the spelling of each and every word
Incorrect spelling in a business website may drive the potential customers away. This is because the customers expect to be facing professionals when they need services from your business. Wrong spellings on your website indicate unprofessionalism. Therefore, thoroughly checking spellings is a crucial web design for strategy.
With these web design strategies for businesses in mind, a professional business website can be made by anybody.

Friday, December 14, 2012

How To Benefit From Using CMS

A content management system (CMS) is very useful for online business owners, programmers, web developers and website owners. It allows any person using a website to edit the website's content without using software or having programming knowledge. A CMS provides a great alternative to the traditional system where websites could only be built by web designers and a website owner had to pay every time he/she wanted to add or edit content in his/her website.

The capabilities of a content management system are numerous and highly beneficial. They include the following.

Content Creation

The front of a CMS has an authoring environment which is easy to use and its design is similar to that of MS Word. This authoring environment allows you to create new pages or update website content without having to know how to code HTML. With a CMS, you can also easily manage your website's structure. Many content management systems available allow users to restructure their sites by dragging and dropping content without breaking links.

Content Management

After creating a webpage, it is saved into a content management system's central repository. The repository stores all the content and other supporting details of a website. The central repository allows a CMS to provide some useful features to the user such as;

Making sure that every user can only transform the section of the website that he/she is responsible for.

Integrating web content with existing IT systems and information sources.

Tracking all the versions of a webpage and the time and date when a user changed information.

A content management system offers a wide range of workflow capabilities. When an author creates a page, it is sent to the manager for approval and then to the central web team which performs an editorial review. Finally, the page containing the content is sent to the legal team which signs it off before it is automatically published on the website. A CMS manages the page's status at each step and notifies the people concerned. In this manner, the workflow capabilities of a content management system make it possible for more authors tobe involved in a website's management. The CMS maintains strict control over the consistency, quality and accuracy of the information.

Publishing

After content gets into the repository, it can be published on the website or on the intranet. The publishing engines of content management systems are powerful and they allow users to apply the page layout and appearance of a website automatically as the content is published. The may also allow users to publish the content to many different websites. Since the appearance of every website is different; the CMS allows web developers and graphic designers to specify the appearance the system applies.

Presentation

A CMS also provides several features that help enhance the effectiveness and quality of a website. For example, a content management system can build your website's navigation for you by reading the structure from the content repository. With a CMS, you can also make your website interactive and dynamic and increase its impact in the process.

Conclusion

A CMS can significantly simplify the maintenance of websites and intranets. The market offers hundreds of CMSs and they all have different strengths and capabilities. When choosing a CMS, you should first consider your business needs and then evaluate the different content management systems available to see if they can meet those needs.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Web Experience Management













The importance of web experience management for any corporate entity cannot be underestimated. The focus of this activity has over time shifted from the simple objective of getting content onto websites and managing its publication. For most, if not all corporate entities, management of web content is geared toward realizing specific business objectives. The success of the web experience management strategy is measured in terms of business results generated for the corporate entity.

In order to achieve the best business results, firms have to be up to date with the latest trends in web experience management. A management strategy that worked for a firm five or six years ago would most probably not work in the present time. Technology is very dynamic. New trends come up almost on a daily basis which effectively changes the manner in which web content management should be approached.
One trend that has gained immense popularity in recent times over the internet is the use of social networking sites. There are more people using social networking sites today than there has ever been at any other time in the history of internet usage. This fact has had a profound effect on web experience management. There seems to be a gradual shift in user experience management strategy aimed at making the on -site user experience resemble the social networking experience.
More and more corporate websites are trying to make their sites user-friendly and more engaging as is the case with social networking sites. This means that the interaction between a firm and its clients through its website is slowly taking a multi-directional approach. Many sites are coming up with ways to enable users to generate content on the site. This means that clients can post comments, reviews and even ratings on the sites. Many websites even offer the users the opportunity to generate content using their social network profiles. As such the users do not have to create extra web profiles on these websites.This means less passwords and usernames that the user will have to remember.
Web experience management in the modern world has also been greatly affected by the use of mobile phones. Again, like the social networking sites, more people today use mobile phones than ever before. The mobile phone has become the preferred means of accessing the internet for many, and may even replace the computer in this respect. This implies that web content management in recent times focuses greatly on the issue of "mobile web". Most corporate entities today have ensured that their web experience management strategy includes having mobile versions of their websites in addition to the desktop versions.
Mobile web experience management also focuses greatly on the development of mobile applications for the specific websites. As such, mobile web users do not have to necessarily log into the firm's website to get information. They can use the mobile applications instead to do whatever it is they wanted to do on the website. Anyone who is serious about getting the most out of their user experience management cannot afford to ignore the mobile phone market.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Welcome

Hello All!

This is a blog with the intents and purpose of helping you business owners build a successful, attractive website for your company. Is your page full of Javascript over a tacky background? Keep up with this blog for helpful advice to spruce up your site to increase traffic and ultimately, business. I am a freelance web designer and writer, so if you have any interest in me writing a guest post for one of your blogs, shoot me an email at SamWatts127@gmail.com. I hope that this blog will help your business and give you an entertaining read!

Thanks,
Sam Watts