Affordable Website Design

Neil MacLeod

How do we know if a web design is affordable? Affordable website design is when there will be an obvious return on investment, over a set term. But the costs do not just stop at the website build itself. One has to look at whole expected life cycle of the website. Here are some ways that you can have a more affordable web site design development at the initial purchase stage.

The initial meetings usually get drafted into the cost of the website. Traveling to a client takes time and money so preparation is the key here. Find someone local, and get a minimum of three quotes. It may take more than one meeting to decide who to choose so here is where your preparation pays off. Know what you want, know how it should be achieved and reduce the number of meetings needed.

The actual design of a website can be very costly or very affordable, if you know what you want then it is more affordable. There are plenty of templates out there and even more websites, so if you leave it to a designer to build from scratch it will cost. The current trend is for simplistic design and since you have your own logo it should not be too hard to sketch together a style of your liking, simplistic design should not cost a lot of money. The important part for us is the content of the website so make sure that the design does not crowd this content.

The website has to be hosted somewhere and web hosting comes in various forms. Make sure that it suits what you need. If you have a ten page website which you aim to grow to a hundred page website, and one page averages at 110KB, then you should be looking at a web space of around 11MB. Take into account additional or larger images so triple it to be safe to start with at around 35MB. ? Do not pay for a 500MB website hosting when you only need 35MB.

Are they building the site from scratch or are they using open source software. If they build it from scratch, it is highly likely that the costs will be very high due to testing and development. Also, the support costs will be high as it is bespoke. Open source software is developed by the community and supported by the community. More than one web Design Company can take over a website built from open source software and support it without problem. If you use open source then there will probably also be pre built training packages on how to use it. Again reducing the cost and making the website more affordable.

Open source software is free software which web design companies can use and manipulate to suit their needs. The web designers still put in a lot of effort to make it look and behave as you like it but the engine of the website is normally already been and can be adapted to various situations.

So, as a starting point to a more affordable website design, have a good idea of the design you want. Try and opt for open source software. Have a guess at your web hosting needs and question if you think it is too much.

About The Author

Neil MacLeod runs http://www.web-studio.co.uk/ providing web site and web marketing services in Buckinghamshire. Neil has been building websites since 1999 and is a founding member of http://www.itwebnetwork.co.uk.

Designing Websites That Appeal To The Senses

Jerry Bader

Taking Advantage of The Experience Factor

We read the newspaper, we watch television, and we listen to the radio, but we experience the Web; this is what makes 'The Website' one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today's marketing executives. Unfortunately conventional wisdom has stifled the 'experience factor' on most website presentations.

Traditional circulation based advertising biases and pitch-mandated direct mail practices from metric-minded agencies have limited businesses' ability to take advantage of the Web's capacity to provide a more active, creative, and penetrating sensory experience aimed at furthering marketing objectives.

As consumers of information we all filter what our mind considers irrelevant. When we go to a website we quickly recognize where banner and text advertisements have been placed and proceed to ignore them for the rest of our visit. Even television ads are becoming increasing less effective, even as their cost increases. Yet people will watch and even look forward to creative, entertaining advertisements that capture our imagination and inform our ability to make better decisions about what we buy and who we buy from.

Does Anybody Really Know What Works?

It is easy to rely on after-the-fact number crunching and projected head-numbing statistics to justify how marketing campaigns are constructed rather than on the less predictable but more relevant elements of psychology and human nature. But do numbers really tell the true story, or are they just protect-your-butt justification designed to ease everyone's mind when it comes time to commit to a budget?

Take the entertainment industry for example. Here is an industry that can tell you how many people watched a particular television show on a per minute basis. So if these and the other cerebral-cortex-boggling figures are so telling, why do networks have such a hard time delivering programs that people will watch; or do they yank new potentially successful shows off-the-air based on their initial numbers before they ever have a chance to find an audience?

Television is such an expensive medium, its practitioners have come to rely on seemly safe, tried, hackneyed old formula, knowing that it is easier to sell sponsors what used to work, even when they know there is little chance of it working again. The fact is nobody really knows what combination of stories, writers, actors and producers is going to capture the publics' imagination.

So what does this have to do with Web-marketing? Everything. The Web is not an expensive production medium and that allows marketers to experiment with different techniques and creative. Unless your Web-business is a circulation-based advertising model, there is no reason to limit your creative marketing to worn-out concepts and number-based incentive formats that for the most part, no longer work.

Sensory and Experience Design Concepts

The essence of good advertising and its big brother marketing, is creative story telling; stories presented effectively, inform, persuade, and penetrate our consciousness based on their ability to tap into our sensory experiences. There has developed over the last few years two new approaches to design that acknowledge this powerful aspect of human nature: Sensory and Experience Design.

The implications of Sensory and Experience Design can be found in everything from product development to package design. When we talk about SenEx Design we are talking about how real people react to their experience with products and marketing presentations.

We experience the world through our senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Stand in a supermarket and watch people shop for fruit and vegetables; they pick them up, squeeze them, turn them over and over looking for flaws, smell them, and if the store keeper isn't looking they may even have a taste. When people buy a car, they look at the specifications listed in the brochure, but they still go to the showroom, kick the tires, run their hands along the shinny new paint, smell the leather interior, and take that sucker for a test drive to see how she handles. It's all about experiencing the product through our senses - it's that sensory experience that becomes imbedded in our memory.

To date most companies have lagged in their efforts to implement these new SenEx marketing communication approaches on their websites due to their obsession with search engine optimization issues that focus on the volume of traffic rather than the quality of the marketing message. Business seems to be stuck in a circulation-based advertising and mass-market mindset that runs contrary to the Web's niche market 'Long Tail' nature and its ability to communicate by presenting information that appeals to a variety of senses.

Search Engine Optimization Issues

No one will argue with the desire of website owners to attract large numbers of viewers to their sites. But this desire has spawned an entire industry of people claiming to be able to provide website owners with the holy grail of search engine optimization: making it to the top spot in an organic search on your favorite search engine.

Not everyone willing to pay for an S.E.O. expert to optimize his or her site can be number one in an organic search. And of course there is the issue of paid search placement that trumps organic searches.

As fast as search engine optimization experts develop ways to beat the search engines, the experts at the search engines change their algorithms, and my money is on the guys at Google.

When it comes to search engine optimization consider the following important issues and questions:

1. Do the search engine tactics employed on your site degrade, obscure, or in some way diminish the ability of your website visitors to quickly find the information they want?

2. Do these search engine tactics impede your ability to effectively deliver your marketing message in a way that attracts attention, triggers relevant sensory experience, and embeds your message in your visitors' memories?

3. Do tactics like outbound reciprocal links and inline body-text links send people away from your site when you want them to stick around and hear what you have to say?

4. Do you have excessive repetitive copy-text on your site aimed at being indexed by search engines rather than read by people for clear concise understanding?

5. Have you reduced your complex message or instructions to a series of bulleted points that confuse rather than clarify?

6. Do your search engine tactics concentrate on the volume of traffic rather than the quality?

7. Is the traffic you're attracting leaving your site as fast as it's arriving?

The lesson we should learn from SenEx Design concepts is that websites need to be designed for people not search engines. Delivering a clearly understandable marketing message is achieved by tapping into the psychological and emotional responses triggered by sensory experiences. That is how you need to communicate to an audience separated from you by the vast expanse of the Internet.

SenEx Web Design Using Audio and Video Techniques

People are hungry for information. In today's fast-paced world the average person needs to constantly upgrade their knowledge of ever changing and more complex products and services. Things that were good for you yesterday today are harmful; products that don't exist today will exist tomorrow. So it doesn't matter if you are a homemaker, retiree, or a buyer for an international corporation, the need-to-know is constantly with us and it creates what Richard Saul Wurman has described as "Information Anxiety".

We just don't have the time to study everything we need-to-know or want-to-know that affects our business and personal lives. We need the information fast and in an easily digestible format. And we need that information presented in a way that will make it easy for us to retain it.

The power of Web-audio and video is their ability to illicit experiences by presenting information in a linear narrative that appeals to the senses of sound and sight. This ability attracts and focuses an audience's attention on the material you want highlighted; it presents that material in an easily digestible format; it clarifies the meaning and significance of critical details; and it penetrates viewers' consciousness so that the information is retained.

The following types of audio and video SenEx Web-presentations can be used to deliver a variety of material:

1. Web-commercials and Email Campaigns
2. Special Promotions and Product Offerings
3. Product Descriptions and Overviews
4. Testimonials and Reviews
5. How To Instructions and Tutorials
6. Frequently Asked Questions and Q&As
7. Expert Lectures, Analysis and Opinion
8. Background and History
9. Personality, Staff, and Business Profiles

Conclusion

We all have something we want to sell: a product, a service, a plan, an idea, or even ourselves. And anyone who has ever run a sales department will tell you the best way to sell is through human interaction and the best way to emulate that on a website is with Web-audio and video that uses Sensory and Experience Design techniques to deliver the message.

About The Author

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com, http://www.136words.com http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

The Shrek Model of Web Design

Christine Anderssen

Here is a web design theory : websites are like onions, you see, since websites have layers. And ogres are like onions, since ogres have layers. Websites are designed by web designers. Ergo - web designers are like ogres.

So, let's explore why web designers are like ogres.

Firstly, let's see why we say that websites are like onions, with layers, in the first place - since this is the whole raison d'etre of my argument.

~Websites have an outer layer~

This is the graphical look and feel of the site. This is normally what most people think of when they refer to 'web design'. In order to create this your common, or garden, web design ogre needs to have an artist's eye and a designer's skill with tools such as Photoshop or Fireworks. The graphical web designer needs to have insight into the latest web design styles, He needs to be able to wield shades and shadows and meld them into Web 2.0 flavored onion soup. Preferably soup not made with eyeballs.

~The second layer of a website is the structure~

The structure could be determined through some method such as functional decomposition, where the web designer might start with the main function (home page) and break the site into manageable sub sections so that he ends up with a clear idea of the scope of the site as well as the internal structure. So here your web designer needs to have some knowledge of basic Software Engineering principles. But even more than that, once the main functions of the site have been designed, the functions need to be married to the graphical design in such a way that the system is usable. A knowledge of the principles of good web design and usability (ala Nielson - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html), and a familiarity with the site http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ to learn how to avoid making mistakes such as 'mystery meat navigation', is essential.

~The third layer of a website is the dynamic and interactive elements~

Frontpage and Photoshop can only bring you so far. Your web design ogre might find that he simply has to go and kill a couple of nerdy programmers to steal their reference manuals: PHP and MySQL for Dynamic websites, AJAX and PHP - Building responsive Web Applications. And he'd better know that Ruby on Rails is not a gem on a train track.

~Then we get to the content~

The website needs to be filled with good, quality content. Sometimes you are lucky and your client gives you good content. Other times, you'd better start rewriting the techno-speak and corporate waffle and ask your client gently if he can state five benefits of their services. So, a good knowledge of copywriting and a command over the English language will not come in amiss.

So, we have the layers that make a website. The core, though, is the marketing strategy.

~Marketing Strategy~

We all know that it is NOT just a case of 'build it and they will come'. The website needs to be marketed and it can only be marketed if the underlying SEO principles have been kept in mind right from the start - in other words, links are easily followed by humans as well as search engines, all pages have meaningful titles, keywords are gently worked into the content of the pages. Apart from that, someone needs to take the marketing budget allocated to the website (all websites have a marketing budget, right?) and use that marketing budget to get the best ROI for the site - decide on the best Internet Marketing strategies for building links and traffic and then go forth and execute (the strategy, that is).

Now, my question is: Is it fair to expect one person to have all these skills?

Years ago when I studied 'Computer Science' there was basically one job title to aspire for and that was 'Systems Analyst'. If you worked for a really big corporate they might have distinguished between System Analyst and Programmer. (And there was also a career called 'Punch Operator', which strangely enough, has disappeared since today we all are supposed to do our own punching...) And yes, I suppose the 'System Analyst' of that time was supposed to do everything - analyze, build, test, deliver and support the system.

But... tempers fuggit.... 'That was then, this is now.'

Today, there are myriad career paths available for the aspiring math's whiz-kid who sits down for an aptitude test. Anything from Business Analyst to Test Manager to Network Administrator to IT Technician....

And BTW, if you are a COBOL programmer, you are a COBOL programmer. You know COBOL; that is what you do. Nobody would expect you to sort out the DNS entries for the company intranet server.

But the same specialization doesn't seem to have filtered through to the web design arena. I saw a job description just today for a 'web developer' who is supposed to have the following skills: Photoshop, Fireworks, Flash, Swish, .net, C#, MSAccess, SQL design experience, ASP, VB, .net, HTML, DHTML, ASP, XML, CSS, Java script and VB script. And this poor sod is supposed to also maintain networks and troubleshoot Windows servers. And wait for it - this paragon of a web design ogre will be paid what practically constitutes a minimum wage in the IT world. And this is in the corporate world, where they should really know better and where they can actually afford to appoint specialists.

If you are a web design freelancer working for yourself, you'd better be sure that you are well versed in all the skills that go into building the layers of a website...or you'd better start working on a plan to build strategic partnerships with other specialist freelancers. This will allow yourself some freedom to specialize in whichever aspects of web design that you enjoy the most, as well as offer the opportunity to others to do the same.

About The Author

Christine Anderssen is a web design ogress of multiple talents. You can find her at TM4Y Web Design and Internet Web Hosting for South Africa. After spending 20 years in the corporate IT world she recently started her own Web Design and Development company specializing in custom built Internet solutions for small businesses.

http://www.tm4y.co.za/

User Friendly And Search Engine Friendly Website Design

by: 5FISH Web Design

Designing a website is much more important than creating an attractive image of a web page. Of course your website is an important part of your online business. The homepage on your web site is very important. A professionally designed website is the key to successful converse to your prospective clients about your products or services. Launching a quality web site is an absolute must for an online business web site. Web Site Design specifically for the business people from small to large business, and acts as a key to develop a website to meet their business objectives. Web designing in a website attracts buyers, also creates interests and alters the internet browsers as consumers. Website owners should also ensure that the web designing is a most common way that charms and creates interest in viewers to view and move through your website. Web Designing is also plays an essential roll in a marketing campaign to bring your business into the general public notice and into a new productive business environment.

In online business, if a businessman wants his website to stand out to the visitors; one can make this happen by utilizing a web design to his website which is unique and different from all others. Mainly he has to choose the precise web designing and the web design options carefully. Choosing a web design also provides a valuable introduction to the design fundamentals at work in all well-designed Web sites. Web designing is also said to be known as a navigating tool to a website.Web designing focus on creating attractive, welcoming and with cutting edge designs to create the right image for a business can be formed to a website.

Choosing a color to your website should be one of your first concerns when it comes time to start your web site designing. The color which you are choosing for your website design should be selected after a careful consideration. Excellently web designed websites must have good color, graphics, animation and sound. Graphic is a key tool in web designing, graphically designed website or a webpage will be a glowing and pleasing sight to the consumers. Animation and sound when united with the web designing acquires a well-liked and accessible place to a website.

Choosing a Good Web designing company is a key factor in designing a user friendly and search engine friendly website.

About The Author

5FISH is a well-known web design company in Muskoka It also offers services like web development, Search engine optimization and website hosting in Canada.
Website: http://www.5fish.net/