How To Identify A Quality Website Design Company

The website design industry is highly competitive with many different businesses all-competing for your clientele.  This provides a great buyers market for web design services and you should utilize this buyer’s advantage to secure the right company for you.

When choosing the right website design company you should consider the following:

1) How Many Questions Do They Ask:  A website design company that asks many questions about your business, customers, products and goals is more likely to produce a web design you are happy with.  When they don’t ask you many questions it is highly probably they will be using templates to design your website from.

2) View Their Complete Portfolio:  Ensure that you request to view their complete portfolio and in conducting the review note the use of colours and styles in their design.  It the website design company appears to use only one style or limited colours then gauge whether these colours and styles suit your business.

3) Do They Have A Plan:  A quality web design company will have a planning document which walks you through the process of building your website.  The more comprehensive the plan the more likely you are to be working with a professional company.

4) Ask Them About SEO:  While the actual website designer does not need to know SEO it’s important that someone within the company can clearly articulate the benefits of SEO.  All website designs now need basic SEO integration to ensure traffic generation and success.

5) Call Their Recent Clients:  Choose 2 recent clients of the web design company to call and ask them about their experience.  Specifically find out how smooth the process was and any potential sticking points you should know about.

6) Who Owns the Copyright:  This can be a major problem with some website design companies as they wish to maintain copyright on all their work.  Unfortunately this is not what you desire, you want to own full copyright to the materials produced for you.

7) Set the Deadline:  Prior to engaging the website design company makes sure you tell them of your set deadline of delivery.  Ask them if they can confidently deliver on time and meet your targets.  If they are unable to then you need to find a company that will.

8) Source File Access:  A quality website design company will give you full unrestricted access to the source files which run your site.  By having this access you can always have another designer edit your files rather than engaging the same company.

When you find a website design company that fits these major criteria you are most probably working with a quality company.  It’s important to remember that you need to like the company you are working with so ensure their personality style meets yours!

Google Panda Update – How It Affects Search Engine Optimisation

As you know Google is the primary search engine that all businesses are aiming to dominate and recently a major update has been released affecting all websites. It is not uncommon for Google to release updates as they are constantly improving the way they rank sites, as a business owner it is your responsibility to ensure your website keeps track with those updates.

At Sigma InfoTech our teams of experts have studied the latest update called the “Panda Update” and identified three major changes to Search engine optimisation in the update you need to understand:

SEO Major Change 1: Poor Quality = Poor Results

In the Panda Update Google changed the algorithm it uses to index and rank sites so that it discounted low quality, low value sites. Sites that have unique, valuable content will be ranked higher then sites that have low value, duplicate content.

No longer can a cheap, duplicate content site rank well in the search engine you must invest in building quality sites with well-written and well-researched content. This is not something new though as at Sigma InfoTech we have always told our clients they need quality content and quality sites to get long-term search engine results.

Search Engine Optimisation Major Change 2: Become Google’s Content Partner

The second major change in the Panda Update is Google has stated publicly they will reward trusted, high quality sites. It is important right now to ensure you are optimizing your site effectively and within Google’s terms of service. If you are doing this then you will be rewarded by Google, here is the direct quote from Google:

“Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.”

When creating your website ensure you are producing content and pages on your site that reflect what Google and your visitor requires. Sigma InfoTech clients should be elated with this news as all of your websites are built on this principle.

Website Optimisation Major Change 3: Win-Win-Win

An out-dated but often used technique for Search Engine Optimisation is to write content designed to rank well in search engines without considering your readers. The “Panda Update” is forcing website publishers to provide content that is “Win-Win-Win”.

Win 1: Provide content that readers and visitors want to read and find valuable

Win 2: Provide content that is well search engine optimised and easily indexed by Google

Win 3: Rank well because you have achieved your visitors and Google’s goals

Simply put, the Panda Update means website owners who are making an investment in quality content, quality web design and website design quality coding will be rewarded. Google is trying to improve the quality of their search engine results and by following their simple rules you will start to rank well.

Web Design-Significance of Web Usability in Website Design

Web usability is to make easy and efficient way, for your users to find, what they are looking for through an effective Web design. An effective website design can increase the time spent by each customer on your website and thereby improving the chances of increasing the sales or generating a lead.

Uniformity forms an integral part of a Good Web site design

Users have steadily become adapted to a particular layout for a web site design and thus have become the standard for most of the websites. Some of them are:

1) “Organization logo” at the top left with logo linking back to the home page.

2) “About us” is used for organizational information.

3) “Navigation bar” at the same place on each page.

4) Anything flashing and places above your logo is probably an “advertisement”

4) Information like “Privacy policy and terms of use” in the footer

There are numerous other unrecorded conventions that people have started to expect. It is important that Web Site Designers should appreciate the prominence of these conventions in a web site design as we are steadily becoming used to these things while accessing a website.

Size can cost!
It is important for a site to load quickly as customer is very impatient to get the information he want. An average user will not wait for more than 6-7 seconds for a page to download.

Some aspects you may want to consider are:

1) Use CSS to layout your web page.
2) Use CSS to create navigation
3) Use Web optimized graphics

Information should not be hidden

Ensure that it is easy to access and find information on the website. A good web site designer will always makes it easier for people with all sorts of interests to find information. Your web site design should provide info for those people who need just brief information and also for people who want to find as much as possible for the product and services.

Navigation as important as content

We understand the importance of web site navigation in any web site design. Make sure that the navigation makes it easier for people to find information on the web site. There is no point in having a lot of content on your website if no body is going to find it. Make sure that no information is more than three clicks away.

These are only a few points you should consider when developing a good web site design. It is always a good idea to show your website to your family and friends with different Internet skill levels and find out how easy or difficult it is for them to find the information on your website.

Sigma InfoTech an Australian based Website design, website development firm specialising in web design, graphic design, Software Development, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimisation helps to remain high in the search engines and with it any of the sites can achieve the desired goal of influencing profits.

Ill-Effects of Poor Web Site Design

It’s very important for a business owner to understand the impact of poor web site design on the visitor retention. If you want your web site to be an important and successful part of your business, ensure yourself to work with your web site designer in order to develop a web site design that keep your visitors intact and interested in your website.

Home page is an important part of any website as it is the first point of interaction between the Website and the visitor which ultimately leads to a potential customer. Ensure the homepage to be interesting and engaging, else one may find that the customers do not navigate further from home page. Take an example of this, as looking for a car. The first impression is look of the car. If the customer is not satisfied with the look, he will not go about the features of the car. That’s why it is important to ensure that any web site design puts enough emphasis on the home page.

It is very important that the web site loads quickly. Most of the visitors have the concentration span of maximum 10 seconds and if your website takes it longer to load they will go for other alternatives! Most of the people have good internet connections, which offer a great speed and thus paving a way to use lots of graphics in web site design. A lot of website designers are now using images on the homepage. I would recommend that one should go for web optimised graphics. It leads to a good website design and also reducing the loading time.
 
Keep the background of any web site white or in very light colours, as people come to a web site to research on the products and services and if website design uses dark colours the visitors will not be able to read. It will ultimately defeat the purpose of providing information through the website! Also the font of the text should be in dark colour, to facilitate the visitors to read it.
Your website should be easy to navigate. Developing a great website design where people can’t navigate easily through a website may lead to increase the bounce rate. Ensure your website designer to develop a website design with easy site navigation and thus no information is more than three clicks away.

When designing an E-commerce website, the fact that should be kept in mind is that it should be easy for customers to buy stuff from the website. One should have clear and prompt “Buy Now” and “Add to cart” links so that people can simply make a purchase. This might sound small but is very important for a good web site design for an E-commerce store.

Make sure that there is enough information about the contact person and the business on the website. It is important that the customers gain confidence in the Seller when they visit the web site. Tell them what your mission is? And what values your business has? Also when it comes to serving your customers? Tell visitors how you are more qualified than the competitor, in providing product or services they are looking for.

Reasons behind selecting the Sydney based web design company

Markets are revamping and businesses are planning to gear up with better strategies to prevail better. During recession it has become clear that effective website design helps businesses in remaining unaffected even during tough times. Web presence is now mandatory for all businesses and with the help of World Wide Web; business goals have been immensely achieved.  Selection of the proper web design company and web designer indeed matters; it is the artistry of the web designer that makes a site different from the other similar ones. Sydney based web design companies have been largely accepted across the globe for their outstanding services.

It is wise to highlight and find the facts that have made the Australian web design companies popular. The nation has been successful in implementation of e-commerce before any other nation. It is not that all Aussies are aware of the codes, pseudo codes and tools associated to information technology, but when it comes to use and application of IT, Australia leads the chart. It is interesting indeed that across the country, from reputed real estate agents to the local barbers maintain web portals. Online commerce and e-trends are prominent in all corners of the nation. The Sydney abased website design companies have come up with alluring and innovative web based solution and this influenced the massive growth of e-commerce.

Not only the Australian businesses, business houses from other parts of Asia-Pacific regions pour down to Sydney to find the best and suitable web designers. There are several web design and animation institutes within New South Wales. People are aware of the fact that these schools produce best of the breed and when a web designer from a proper animation school is selected, the rest assured. The best web design companies of Sydney also recruit skilled and experienced website designers who can share experiences with the new designers. It is the club of experience and innovative new strategies that make Sydney based web companies different.

There are different website development related service providers in Sydney and finding out a suitable one is not at all a problem. Most of the reputed web companies are located in prominent locations and with the help of “Sydway” anyone can drive down following the roadmaps provided within the book. With a little self research it is possible to locate the best web companies. As these companies maintain toll free numbers for the high esteemed clients, it is possible to book an appointment with the best web designers before reaching the companies. Basic information can be found just with a phone call as well.

The technologies and the budget needs to be known first and it is worth mentioning that the budget differs in accordance to the usage of tools and technologies during development of the web sites. In application development and easy to use user interface development these companies are outstanding. In case of better graphics and special features use within the sites, the charges can go up. It is another fact that compared to the other countries like the US and the UK; the rates offered by the Aussie website designer are much lesser, again the quality of work delivered remains similar or even better. This also puts these web companies in a better and competitive stature.