Internet Marketers vs. Web Designers

This concept is confused by those who are new to internet marketing. I am going to try to make this a very simple explanation, yet please make sure that you contact me if you have any questions. This is very important and you should fully understand the difference between an internet marketer and a web designer before you choose to ask for internet marketing help.

Definition of Web Designers:

Web designers are those who are paid to design web sites for individuals or businesses. These people are usually pros with html code, php, and all of the other types of programming that is commonly found on web sites. They focus very deeply on the color schematics and graphics of a web page in order to produce the flashiest end result. Sometimes they even create sites in FLASH, which is a type of design that you may have seen on sites in the past with a lot of motion and movement on the page. Sometimes, the pages even have a short introduction scene. These designers can be very talented, and sometimes they charge very healthy prices for their services. I have seen some quotes as low as $5,000 and up to $15,000 for some business websites.

Even though the sites that typical web designers produce may be very aesthetically pleasing, you must ask yourself a very important question before pulling out your wallet. Do you want a nice looking site only, or do you wish to have a site that is designed to get you brand new customers. The two desires could change whether or not you go with a web designer or an internet marketer for your project.

Definition of Internet Marketing Help

Internet marketers do exactly what their name states, they market on the internet. The actual website in itself to them is not as important as the actual marketing of the website. This is not to say that the websites that an internet marketer produces are not aesthetically pleasing, because they certainly are attractive looking sites.

The difference is that internet marketers usually use a different web site design and mechanism in order to receive the most favoritism from Google. What good is your website, if you are not being sent new customers from the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN? Search engine marketing is crucial for internet marketers to acquire the success that they desire. However, do not think that search engine marketing is the only tool that internet marketers utilize. There are many other off-page optimization techniques that can be utilized to market one’s website, and this is a tactic that 99% of web designers do not wish to utilize with their customers.

John’s Philosophy for the Internet Marketing Helpline

My main goal of this article was not to diminish web designers or the skills that they possess. However, I did want you to realize that sometimes more than just web design is needed for you to have success with your new website. It can sit idle without many visitors per day, or you can choose the Internet Marketing Helpline to turbocharge your web marketing so that your new site actually reaches your prospective client base.

Designing A Web Site For A Set Screen Resolution is Outdated

Introduction

In website development we regularly ask our clients what size screen resolution they would like us to build their new website at.

I was reading somewhere recently that apparently these days the only answer to that question should be ‘all of them’ and ‘none of them’. What this basically means is that new websites should be built to accommodate all different screen sizes these days, particularly with the increased popularity of hand help web browsers, smart phones, net books and the like. Of course there is also the other end of the spectrum in the new huge wide screen flat screen monitors. I recently treated myself to a 24 inch Asus which does 1920×1080 which is big enough to get two web browser windows on screen side by side, but if you make one of them full size, the majority or websites look, well, just plain odd!

What exactly is screen resolution then?

If you are not familiar with screen resolution, the simple answer is that it is the size of your screen. However, this can be quite misleading because it is actually the number of pixels that make up the display area on the screen of your monitor. Still not clear? Well let’s look at some examples to help clarify exactly what screen resolution is.

Currently what would appear to be the most popular screen resolution is 1024×768 (accounting for 62% of my website visitors). This is a screen that is 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels high. What is a pixel? A Pixel, derived from the phrase Picture Element, is basically one of the thousands of tiny dots that make up your display screen. However, this does not necessarily determine the physical size of your monitor (14 inch, 15 inch, 19 inch etc) because most monitors are capable of displaying the screen in different screen resolutions. It is fairly accurate to say that if you want to run your monitor at a high screen resolution then you will need a large monitor, the larger the monitor the greater the resolution it can display at (assuming your graphics processor can support a high resolution).

All getting a bit technical? Put simply the higher the screen resolution the more things you can fit on your screen before they have to go onto the next line, or before you have to scroll down or scroll right.

What’s this got to do with Web Site Design?

When creating the visuals for a new website design, traditionally the experienced graphic designer would be working to a specific resolution in order to make sure that the design fits in your browser window without having to scroll right. (Thankfully most website owners don’t demand you make their pages so that you don’t have to scroll down anymore!)

The most popular screen resolution of 1024×768 will have areas of screen with nothing on them when viewed at a larger screen size such as 1920×1080 or larger so a professional ecommerce web design ideally has a mechanism for dealing with this issue.

When designing at a fixed resolution you can deal with larger display settings by either aligning the site to the left and having a huge great big gap to the right, or you can centre align the website in the available space and then the extra screen resolution will be on either side of the content area.

However, the sensible, modern day approach is to make the site flexible to accommodate all screen resolutions by creating ‘fluid’ content that will flow to fit the available page space irrespective of what size screen resolution it is viewed at.

Also, because of the increased popularity of the web the challenge for a website owner is how to engage your viewers and get them to stay on your website for as long as possible and show them as much content as possible. One way to help with this is to make full use of all of the available space. Two great big blank areas either side of a tiny web page is simply just a waste of space. Imagine if you picked up a newspaper or magazine and only half of the front page had got any content on it, the editor would get the sack for sure! So by creating fluid web pages, web site owners can take advantage of larger publishing spaces available on bigger screen users, whilst optimising content for display on smaller screens as well.

Another advantage with big screen displays is the ability to use the new area for re-publishing. Re-publishing is a way to put content from another area of your website onto a different page, thereby bringing it forward for the viewer. An example of this that we did on one site we created was to insert an alphabetical list of names of the products available on the website below the left hand menu on pages that were very long.

All pages tend to be different lengths, as determined by the content on the page, so we used a clever widget to create this list of product names and squirt it in the gap until it ran out of space. This was great for SEO too as it gave a direct link to specific product pages based on their product names without having to crawl through category pages first, also website users would often see something in the list they wanted and click straight through to the page and buy the item.

Ultimately this has evolved into what would now be thought of as a web 2.0 ‘tag cloud’ a list of tags that are usually user generated, to indicate and link directly to a specific content group or item. Using a tag cloud is a great way to fill stretched spaces on larger screens that you can fill with what are effectively links to other parts of the website.

How do you make fluid content?

Fluid content is quite simple to create, the majority will be words of course, which are naturally fluid so on a small resolution screen you might get 5-10 words to a row, on a larger screen you can get 20-30 words or more. However the challenge comes with images, and particularly website graphics. A photograph, whilst it can be made smaller and larger offline, it can’t be automatically resized by the web browser at the time of viewing (not taking into account the Zoom function in Internet Explorer).

The HTML code that makes up your web pages is again designed to allow fluidity by fitting content into the available page area, so some best practises that can be employed to make content fluid include not using tables in the code (which are depreciated these days now anyway), not setting specific screen width in pixels, use 100% instead. By fading images into blocks of colour in the website graphics, you can create a stretchable element that will scale to fit all window sizes. Use little boxes to put stuff in, these can then flow around the screen as required without having to be in any particular place, they also help to draw the eye to special offers, discounts, newsletter sign ups etc, and can of course be styled by your graphic designer with curves and shadows and gradients to look great.

Conclusion

Any of the many Loughborough web design companies will agree that a fluid scalable design is really the only option to consider these days, as it maximises the available publishing space on larger screens and with the rising popularity of smart phones and netbooks it ensures you site also works well on these smaller screens.

 

Expert Web Marketing & Design Tips

Your website is where your business resides – it’s like the headquarters of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practice good web design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible. Following are some tips from a web marketing expert and professional designer from a Prescott web design firm:

Make sure you have clear and simple navigation for your site. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to get around your website without confusion.

Make sure your web site design complies with web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox, or even in Safari, you will lose out on a lot of prospective customers.

Reduce the number of images on your website, particularly non-relevant images. They can make your site load more slowly and often are unnecessary. If you think an image is essential, make sure to optimize it for a minimum file size.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless absolutely necessary. These are best for handling or manipulating data, rather than creating visual effects on your site. Some scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even cause some browsers to crash.

Another suggestion is to use CSS to style your content. This will save a lot of work by styling all elements on your website at once.

Port your Business Online for Success

In the current economic environment as the recession bites harder, people will be turning more and more to the internet to source their purchases. Firstly they can look for the best bargains and then purchase on line without even having to leave their homes. This beats the hell out of having to drive miles, find parking space, queue for bargains and then carry the items home or wait for delivery of large products. If your company is still living in the dark ages, and you don’t have an online business then you are offering the competition sales on a plate. In order to stay competitive, businesses need to offer its services/products online, as well as doing business the traditional way. They need to communicate with potential customers who do business mostly online. Be smart and start today to get your business online and out in front.

When you run an online business you potentially have a world-wide audience. This means you can have 24 hour customer access. Automatic systems to respond to orders will be a vital part of the web site design otherwise you will need staff available working unsociable hours. In this new world, the old ways of import/export will become obsolete.

When managing an online business you need to be a Jack of all trades. But communication is an essential part of all the different aspects of running a business. Email and instant messaging are efficient ways of communicating with employees, particularly when different time zones are a complication. Setting up an online conference room will save the need for physical space and travelling and will provide a forum for members to air their views, concerns and challenges.

The website index page is the first thing visitors see when visiting your site. To make a good impression you will need a good brand image, clear information and a user friendly process so that customer will find it easy to purchase their goods. (Don’t make it hard for your customers to find their way around the system and buy products, no matter how clever something may be.)

A Nottingham web design company will enable you to update your website whenever you want, so that any changes in pricing or items are current. Statistics reporting is another service which can give you valuable information on how many people are accessing the site, and from that information you can see if your services/goods are attracting the sales you want. If not then there is an opportunity to revamp your products or website to improve on visit/sales ratios.

For customer satisfaction make sure your business provides excellent quality products, efficient service, and an easy to use system. Where items are good value for money, customers will be happy to recommend your company to friends and family and sales will increase.

The growth of the internet gives a whole new meaning to the world of commerce. using website development millions of people are out there starting new online businesses, all wanting a piece of the cake, all wanting to make their millions. So make sure your business is one of the forerunners and get yourself up there on the first page on Google. Don’t wait, get started now before your competitors leave you behind.