Website Design

The “17 Ways To Boost Web Traffic” article that we are giving away this month has some good advice for getting more visitors to your website. The question I have been pondering lately is whether or not good design can increase your traffic. The conclusion I have come to is yes and no.

No, Google doesn’t care what your site looks like. However, there are things that a good designer will do when building your site that can affect your traffic. Here are 3 things you may not be aware of that a good website designer will do that can directly affect your website traffic:

1. Write clean markup
The code (markup) that exists “under the hood” of your website is what Google sees when it looks at your website. There are countless ways to write code that will result in a page that looks identical from your browser. Not all methods of code writing are equal in the eyes of Google, however. In general a good designer will write code that is short, concise, and organized. This helps Google know what your page is about and makes the process of indexing your page easier on the Google robot. And pleasing Google is a good start towards attracting website visitors.

2. Use CSS
Without getting too technical, CSS (or stylesheets) have become the industry standard for assigning a design to a website. The important thing you need to know is that css separates the content of your site from the design of your site. This results in web pages that are primed for Google.

3. Take Usability Seriously
When you are creating a website worthy of traffic you need to treat your visitors well. That’s called usability. A good designer will make it easy to use your site. Unnecessary clicks will be reduced. Navigation will be clear and friendly. Content will be organized and straightforward. When your site is easy to use people will be encouraged to return.

These are just three things that a designer considers when designing a website. While designers should be aware of how their design decisions will affect your web traffic, sadly this isn’t always the case. Some designers are more concerned with padding their portfolio than creating effective websites. Use the three items above as a way to evaluate your current designer. If he/she tries to downplay the importance of these things it may be a clue that they don’t take your project as seriously as they should. And as always give us a call if you want some more ideas about how to drive traffic to your site.

We have been talking a lot within our office lately about web marketing. One of the conversation starters was from an email from Aaron Brown asking each of us for our picks for the “5 Best Investments for Your Marketing Budget.” It was interesting to here the responses to that question. Not surprisingly, with my passion for design, my answers were weighted heavily in favor of investing your web marketing in design. Chadd’s responses understandably emphasized SEO. I jokingly told him, “Design isn’t in your top 5? That sounds like a fatal mistake to me.”

I know firsthand that Chadd definitely does value good design. His answer wasn’t a putdown to design, but rather an understanding of how people invest their money. Whey you have X amount of money in your website marketing plan you have to prioritize and rationalize how every dollar gets spent. You have to convince yourself that after your website marketing money is spent you can look back and see concrete results that are equal or greater than the initial investment. Design is notoriously hard to measure concretely and that makes it a tough thing to convince people to invest in. But allow me to try…

Believe it or not it is possible to measure and evaluate the ROI of design just as concretely as you can with seemingly less nebulous areas such as keyword research, SEO, analytics, and publicity. While design as a whole can seem like an abstract and fuzzy concept to invest in, it gets easier when you can assign goals to the project. For example, spending $5,000 to improve the design of your website has the feeling of being subjective and arbitrary. It might feel like you are just sprucing up a site that has grown stale. While some designers do take this “jazz it up” approach, we think about design much more strategically here at Red Rocket Media Group. At the heart of good design is a problem solving mentality. Instead of asking “how does this looK?” we design with a more valuable question in mind: “What impact will these changes have on the effectiveness of the site?”

Once you look at design as a way to solve specific problems it becomes much easier to justify budgeting for design in your web marketing plan. So instead of using the broad term of “design,” try to add real goals to describe outcome you would like to achieve with your website. By addressing actual problems that you want to solve you take design out of the subjective realm and into the practical world.

In the next few weeks I am going to address some of the practical ways that design can solve real issues for your website. Specifically I am going to address how:

1. Good design can increase your conversion rates.

2. Good design can improve the credibility of your company.

3. Good design can increase the quality of your products.

As you finalize your website marketing plan I hope that you aren’t too quick to dismiss design as something worthy of your investment. With so many people cutting back on their web marketing budgets, investing in design could be just the edge you need to stand out from your competition.

There is a temptation when website budgets are tight to use one of the cheap design companies found online. A Google search will yield many bargain website template options, but you should be very careful before pursuing them. Here are some questions to ask before you purchase a cheap $500 website design template.

How many other companies use this template?
A pre-designed template will most likely be used by many other sites. Having a unique site is important, so be aware that there will be many other people with sites that look identical to yours.

Will the design hurt my brand?
Your brand is what makes you different from your competition. If you have invested in building a unique identity then a website template is not going to match the rest of your brand. If your brochures and business cards don’t match your website there will be a major disconnect in your customers minds.

Are there hidden costs?
Sometimes cheap websites don’t tell you all the fees associated with your purchase. Does the cost include customization? Will you need to hire a developer to deploy the site? What about hosting? Make sure you know what you are getting into before you fall for a “too good to be true” sales pitch.

Is the content unique?
Some pre-designed websites sell content as well as the design. You can pick and choose from the articles and pre-written text to fit your needs. This is a major no-no if you want to be found by search engines. Google rewards unique content and penalizes sites that aren’t authentic.

What are the long-term costs?
Think about what will happen a year from now when you realize that your bargain website is completely unusable. Consider the money lost throughout the year and the additional burden of starting from scratch now that you see recognize your mistake.

Purchasing a pre-designed website template is definitely a website budgeting mistake. Luckily, there are affordable alternatives that result in high quality templates. Give us a call and we will show you how budgeting for your website doesn’t mean you have to end up with a low quality product.

As a northern colorado web designer, I am often conflicted about one of the most popular and polarizing technologies on the internet: Flash. You probably know that Flash is what gives many websites the slick interactive animation and transitions and you may have read passionate internet rants in favor and against Flash. When done correctly, Flash can be a great way to add some visual zing to your site. If done wrong it can really hurt your site. If you are considering hiring a northern colorado web design company, keep the following list of pros and cons in mind.

Flash Pros
1. Visual Flair
While other technologies are emerging that mimic the visual pyrotechnics of Flash, it is still unmatched in its ability to animate almost anything you can imagine. If you need complex movement on your site chances are you need Flash.

2. Interactivity
Flash shines when it comes to interactivity. If your site has elements that need to respond to or interact with the movement of a mouse, you probably need Flash.

3. Fonts
Unlike typical websites, Flash has the ability to embed Fonts. If your company requires the use of specific fonts other than the default web fonts, you should consider Flash as an option.

4. Limitless possibilities
Games, video, maps, custom apps – the possibilities are endless. If you can dream it, chances are you can make it with Flash.

Flash Cons
1. Expensive
Because Flash is a specialized skill, it can be hard to find a Flash company to help you with your website project. Once you find a Flash designer in Northern Colorado you may have to get in line because they are busy. Add that to the fact that Flash development takes longer than traditional web design and your project will might be more expensive than you would expect.

2. Hard to Update
If your site has content in the Flash sections it will probably be hard to update. There aren’t any content management systems that would let you update Flash easily.

3. Less visible to search engines
While Google has improved its ability to index Flash based websites, it still falls behind traditional HTML in search engine visibility. If SEO is critical to your site be very intentional in your use of Flash and don’t “hide” important content in the Flash ares.

I left a couple cons off my list that you may have be wondering about. One is load time and the other is the requirement of the Flash plugin. I don’t consider these to be major drawbacks because a good designer should be able to keep file size under control. With Flash penetration in the 99% area it is safe to use Flash without loosing viewers in typical web browser situations.

This list hits the major pros and cons of using Flash, but every website is different.
Don’t let this list tip the scales if you really want to use Flash. In the hands of a great Flash Designer you should be able to avoid the Flash pitfalls that other sites suffer from.

Web design companies in Colorado often make the mistake of talking over the head of their customers. Building a website is a very technical process and conversations with a web developer often leave your head spinning even if you are a reasonably tech savvy person. Below is an entertaining video that has been circulating the internet showing many everyday people being asked if they know the difference between a browser and a search engine.

Most people know that a web browser is the application (like Firefox) on your computer that you use to connect to the internet. A search engine is a website (like Google) that helps you search the internet. It seems unlikely that the video’s conclusion that “as many as 92% of Americans don’t know the difference,” is accurate, but it does illustrate how easy it is for the average person to get confused with even the most basic web concepts.

Most Colorado web design companies are trustworthy, but there is always danger in just “taking their word for it” when it comes to a Northern Colorado web design agency’s technical expertise. Red Rocket Media Group strives to make website design as painless as possible. We explain the technical aspects of your project so that you know the consequences of the decisions you are helping us make. If you are unsure about the technology being implemented on your website give us a call and we would be glad to help you out. We are web experts who speak your language and take the time to make sure you understand the “what” and “why” of your website design.

I did it again.  I started blogging about one thing and by the end of my last post “Fort Collins Web Design Company Reveals #1 Design Mistake,” I had rambled off-topic.  Last time I was supposed to talk about the #1 mistake that web design companies make but I started bird-walking and discussed the 3 steps to online success instead.  Sorry about that.  That’s how blogs go, I guess.

So I’ll try and stay on course today…

What’s the number one mistake that web design companies make?  That’s a hard one.  There are so many.  The list of mistakes that I’ve seen is growing every day.  Here’s one of the biggest mistakes that I’ve seen.  It’s actually kind of funny.

One of our clients, a bike shop had their website designed by a company that has literally designed about 90% of all bike shops around the country.  They came to us concerned that their website wasn’t getting any traffic.  After a little investigation, I found out that the code of the website included a line that actually told the search engines to go away and ignore the whole site.  The company that designed the site literally told Google to go away and not include the website in their listings.  Can you think of any reason they’re not getting any traffic when they tell Google to get out?

It gets worse.  I looked at the web design company’s site and they made the same mistake with their own website…and all of their other clients’ sites.  Hundreds of bike shops have become the victim of SEO malpractice.  That one seems like it should qualify as the #1 website mistake but there are so many others.

How about this one?  Millions of sites are making this mistake.  They include meta keyword tags in their code while neglecting to include the same words in their content.  While a technical matter, you may not understand what that means, but the end result is easy to understand.  Make that stupid mistake and your site will be penalized in Google’s rankings if not totally banned.  Don’t believe me?  BMW made that mistake and their site disappeared off of Google for 30 days as punishment.

Oh, I could go on and on listing the dumb things that ignorant web design companies do to harm their clients’ sites.  To make sure that you’re not the next victim of SEO malpractice, check out the article on the IBCC’s website, How to Choose a Web Site Design Company.

Or, give Red Rocket a call and one of our professionals will take a quick look through your site and let you know if we see any of the most common mistakes.  If you can handle the no-bs approach, give us a call and we’ll tell you exactly what you need to do to turn your website around.  Our number is 970-674-0079.  I hope to talk with you soon.

Chadd Bryant

Another Fort Collins website design came online this week. Red Rocket Media Group, Fort Collins ‘ choice for website design for the past 10 years, is proud to launch McGuyverPainting.com for the world to see. McGuyver Painting, a Fort Collins company has been in business for more than 8 years and has helped hundreds of satisfied customers with interior and exterior painting. To receive a free painting estimate for your project, check out their new website design.