Website Development and Design Services from DLKeur and zentao.com

5 Reasons To Hire A Real Designer & Avoid Templates

Imogen Reed — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:05:58 +0000

Some business owners will look to the shortcuts provided by the thousands of generic templates on the web as well as the design tools that promise a site in minutes to the amateur webmaster. These ideas might work out for you in terms of having a cheap, quick web presence but the truth is they are terrible for the long term performance of your business. Here are five good reasons to hire a designer.

1. Optimised For Your Needs

Unless your website is a simple blog with little additional functionality the chances are you have some content to display in a non-standard format. If you are selling houses your designer might include virtual tour functionality which allow visitors to look around before coming to visit in real life. A shoe store might need a stylish, modern online-retail catalogue. Whilst you can plug many of these features into a template they will look disjointed and often function poorly alongside your other content.

2. Unique

No matter what sector you’re in you can perform this simple experiment. Search on one of the major engines for all your competitors’ sites. Visit them all one by one. Pretend to be a customer for day, browse, explore their sites. Don’t take any notes. The ones you remember, the ones that make an impression days later either offer something unique in terms of service or offer something unique in terms of user experience and appearance. A real designer can deliver that unique experience and make your site stand out from the other sites in your sector. Be brave in your design choices and you’ll reap the rewards.

3. Search Engine Optimisation

Some systems are inherently fairly well optimised for search engines – for example WordPress usually uses sensible header tags for articles and setting up SEO friendly URLs is easy. However there are many significant improvements a designer can make. Everything from the order parts of the site are loaded to the impact fully optimised code can have will have a knock on effect on your search engine rankings. Templates will often be poorly optimised and therefore not only load more slowly which impacts on your customers immediately but will be picked up on by the search engines too.

4. Mobile Users – Responsive Design

Right now there is literally no template that delivers an excellent experience to mobile users. Some will present a site in an acceptable but homogeneous way to mobile users. As we already discussed this kind of ‘looks the same, works the same’ design really doesn’t make your site stand out. Not only that, but many ‘off the shelf’ choices leave you with users who have to do lots of scrolling or users who miss out on certain features. An experienced designer understands how to scale, move and adapt elements to deliver a fast loading, and most importantly unique site to your mobile users.

5. Content Advice

Hundreds and hundreds of online businesses have sites with literally no content. Their owners have picked a vaguely suitable template and put some address and general notes about their services online and have little else to offer. As a result they are rarely visited and the site offers little information to potential customers. A designer will have seen thousands of sites in hundreds of business sectors and can offer good solid advice about which areas you should focus your content on. They will follow this up by making sure your design allows your content to be accessed easily and with as few clicks as possible.

These five items combine to the ultimate reason why you should hire a real designer – your site will not only look great but will make money and be a success. Without one you’ll have a dry, featureless site that hardly anybody visits. Which would you prefer?

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Imogen Reed is a full time business insurance sales woman living in London. In addition to her main occupation, she provides freelance articles and blog posts for a number of publications specialising in web design, new media developments and Android technology.

Client sites: first Page, top ranked in 30 and 45 days

admin — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:32:33 +0000

I’m pleased to find that several websites I recently launched for clients are sitting first page, number one on the major search engines for some very important, highly competitive keyphrases. One site made it for two key phrases in thirty days flat, the other for five phrases in forty-five days. I guess I haven’t lost my touch. I know the site that ranked in 45 days is going to stick. Not sure about the other because the owner demanded description and meta-tag changes after the indexing. All in all, though, I’m happy.

Is Your Website Unique or Just the Same?

admin — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Does your website look like everybody else’s website? Does your blog look like “just another blog?” I visit a lot of websites in the course of my business because the easiest way to get an idea of what a client wants is to have them show me which websites they like out there on the Net. Of course, I will then take their preferences and do something “different” because I don’t particularly move on the same wavelength as everyone else. But I always do at least one or two ‘just like everyone else’s designs so the client can, if they want, pick that style. And, sometimes, they do. But the brave ones choose the more unique designs, and that’s what makes their websites and blogs stand out, and, best of all, stick in the eyes and minds of their visitors.

Time, Initiative, Staying Power, and Consistent Updates

admin — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:00:03 +0000

The end of December and beginning of January is symbolically significant for many. It’s a time when hope is renewed, and, with that hope, often new projects get initiated. I get a lot of requests for new websites, changes to existing websites, and queries for pricing and scheduling availability in the short two weeks surrounding January 1st. Many of these requests wither away; some actually sprout and grow. Here’s a solid, yet short list of things you should consider before launching an online presence:

1) It’s going to take time out of your day, so if your day is already busy, it will only get busier.
2) It’s going to take initiative and staying power, so, if you lack either, beware.
3) To be successful, you’ll need to be consistent in providing new, original content to add to your website, preferably on a daily, but, at least, on a weekly basis.

Nobody Cares About Your Website Unless…

admin — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 13:00:20 +0000

Yes, like anything else, nobody—-nobody at all—-cares about your website…unless:

1) You offer something someone wants or needs that nobody else can give them easier or cheaper.

2) You offer something that provides your visitor with an opportunity to show off, make money, and/or gain recognition.

3) You hold a monopoly on the category of product or service.

4) You have a website that’s addictive once your visitor is first teased into exploring it.

Privacy Isn’t the Default

admin — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 14:02:28 +0000

There’s a bit of a snit happening between family members down the street over some spilled communication. Oops. They thought nobody outside their inner circle of gossips could access their tweets, wall posts, and text sends. Ah…no. Privacy isn’t the default. You have to set it yourself, and keep on setting it over and over again, on all your various social networking sites and applications as well as on all of your e-appliances–cell phones, iPods, iPhones, Blackberries, computers…. And everyone you send to also has to have their privacy settings set not to broadcast publicly to the world wide web, else it becomes part of that ever expanding body of electronic data that’s saturating the public domain of cyberspace. So, if and when you decide to start dissing your next door neighbor’s yard or complaining bitterly about your cousin, do know it’s publicly available for anyone anywhere to read and pass on, including those about whom you’re speaking unless and until everybody in your circle has set their privacy settings appropriately on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linked-In…as well as on all their various electronic gadgets. And, remember, both the social networking sites and the electronic gadgets regularly do programming and software upgrades that resets those settings to the public default.

Just a heads up.

Is Social Networking Effective?

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 15:41:21 +0000

I get that question more than any others, mostly from people who are reluctant to engage in social networking (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Gather…ad infinitum, ad nauseum). The answer is “sometimes, depending on what you are trying to do.”

Social Networking is basically a user-friendly “show-off zone.” Of course, you can’t show off if nobody knows you’re there, so you have to go out of your way to collect an audience by connecting with others. It’s one of those “endless tasks” that you do pretty much on a daily basis.

If you post or add content on a regular basis to any sort of content management system, or even to a static website, then you can take advantage of social networking by proliferating your content throughout using plug-ins or browser add-ons that make it easy to do. Don’t look for this to bring you oodles and kaboodles of traffic, but it will net you a small, steady stream of visitors’ eyes.

Four warnings:

1) Don’t make yourself a pest by emailing, private messaging, or posting continual advertisements for yourself, your website, your product. This will just get folks pointedly ignoring you, or, worse, reporting you as a spammer.

2) Don’t spend your days “tweeting” or posting “nonbits” worth of personal updates to your social networking pages.

3) Don’t “friend” or link to just everyone who requests a connection. Do check out their pages first before accepting. And, if someone starts spamming you, remove them, block them, report them, ban them…using the tools available to get them out of your circle.

4) Beware of viruses, scam artists, spammers, and phishers. You WILL get email supposedly from the various networking sites, and it won’t be good for you or your computer, and maybe not to your bank account, either, if you happen to have too much personal information available on your hard drive or in your social networking interfaces.

Social networking can be a time-killers. Once a day is enough. In fact, once a day, weekdays, is enough. The rest of the time, you ought to be focused on more productive activities. The only other times you should be posting or visiting your various social networking sites is when someone comments or requests a connection. Then, most DEFINITELY, DO RESPOND. It’s good netiquette and the most effective way of gaining respect in the social networking realms.

Remember: social networking is a tool; use it, don’t abuse it, and don’t get trapped by it.

Website Possibilities are Endless

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:55:03 +0000

With CSS and XHTML, there are almost unlimited possibilities. Add Ajax, javascript, and DHTML, plus a little CGI or PHP, and you’ve opened up a whole realm of interactive potentials.

Of course, building it is one thing. Getting them to come is quite another.

What makes you different? What makes you and what you do unique?

Those are the keys to a successful web presence.