Website Design

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.

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.

Most sites are designed by one or two people.  Usually, a graphic designer makes the look of the site and then they build it out using any number of software packages.  However, that’s like building a house using just one person.  Sure, it can be done, but ask any expert and they’ll tell you that it takes other experts to do the job right.  Just like a house requires the skills of a cement crew to pour the foundation, a framing crew, a plumber, an electrician, a drywaller, a roofer and more, a web site requires more than one person to do the job right.  If you’re wanting a site that is not only found in the search engines, but also looks great, and packs a punch when you read it, you’re going to need multiple experts to complete the job.

Generally, to do the job right, it takes a designer to create the look of the site, a programmer to build it, a writer to craft the copy and an SEO expert to promote it in the search engines.  Miss just one piece of the puzzle and the whole thing can fall apart.  Without the right copy, the best looking high traffic site will still fail to make any sales.  Or skimp on the SEO portion and your beautuful new site may never see any real traffic.  It all works together and without every part, the machine won’t run.