Web Design and Hosting

Business owners usually know very little about website design and this is perfectly natural. However, when you decide to promote your business or even to set it up online, you have to learn enough to ensure that the site will serve its practical purpose. As a start, you have to select the website design style that will match the needs and requirements of your business.

Ecommerce style is the ultimate solution for companies that want to sell their products online. What are the specifics of the ecommerce style sites? Firstly, they are organized like department stores, in an electronic version of course. There are different product categories to browse. There are also browsing options by product type of brand. More importantly, you have a shopping cart, which allows customers to select, purchase and pay for products.

Brochure style sites are created to promote a product, a set of products or a particular brand. They are the perfect choice for offline businesses who want to promote their products on the internet. Restaurants, grocery stores, crafts workshops and many other businesses selling their products the traditional way round can benefit from the brochure website design style.

The site is created to have the functionality and attractiveness of a brochure. It presents the products, usually with a number of high quality photographs and a detailed description. Customer testimonials are also usually included. There are usually “how to find us” pages and “contact us” pages.

Magazine style website designs are extremely popular. Their purpose is to provide useful information to visitors in an entertaining manner. In general, magazine style sites are use by affiliate marketers and bloggers. They are not suitable for marketing a specific product or brand since they are information focused and are supposed to provide more general and detailed information. For instance, such a site can provide information on bridal dresses in general rather than on the bridal dresses of a specific designer.

A magazine style site consists of pages of articles. If image content is necessary, it is usually integrated in the text section rather than on the sides. Slideshows are a popular feature of such sites, as they present useful detailed information with both pictures and words. Since the focus is on information, ads and banners are usually found on the right hand side of the layout. There may also be whole page ads, just like in magazines.

Identify your business’s individual needs and choose a website design style in line with them.

Business website design and development has become a must as websites are increasingly becoming the mediums to promote the products and services of companies. Being an interactive form of media, websites can be utilized well to build cordial and continuing relationships with customers. Much of the time, they are the major source of tangible business revenue. An airline company, for example gets majority of its bookings through the “E Tickets” bought online. Similarly the reservations in a hotel or resort can be made swiftly from anywhere if the hotel has such a facility on its website. Clearly, the constant use of the Internet in daily life confirms that good websites are necessary for the very survival of a business. It is through a web page that you can highlight the unique selling proposition of your business to the maximum number of customers across the world.

The Ecommerce websites, also known as the online stores have achieved immense popularity globally and all stakeholders in this business want to increase their online traffic and win the most customers. An Ecommerce website has to be built with tailor made shopping cart software. It must also present an image of vibrancy, competitiveness and proficiency. A recent survey conducted involving around 10,000 online shoppers; more than 30 per cent cited poor website organization as the chief reason to abandon an online store.

Business websites must have a balanced combination of layout and security. They also need to have user friendly navigation. SEO is another idea if you want your website to rank in top results of a key word search on search engines like Google and Bing.

In the online world, a browser can jump to any section of website through an external link. In a random way, once the visitors arrive at any page of the website, they decide whether to navigate to other pages, to return to the website at some other time or to leave the web page. The decision depends on how nice or interesting the user finds the web page.

The World Wide Web Consortium or W3C is the most important ‘international standards’ organization for World Wide Web. The consortium comprises of member organizations that maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the refining of standards for World Wide Web. By using these standards, a website’s foundation gets designed upon technologies that have been developed and tested by leading experts in the Web community. With more than 300 organizations from the web world contributing research and development efforts in compiling and upgrading W3C standards, these standards are truly the leading edge of the Web.

The development of an effective web page in accordance with latest W3C standards is not everyone’s forte. This work can be trusted only to experienced and professional web agencies.

If one of your sales staff turned up to pitch to a potential client or customer dressed in a wrinkled suit that dated back to the days when wide lapels and flares were in, or simply looked like they have recently rolled out of bed after a very long night on the town then obviously you would probably fire them on the spot. Why then do so many businesses continue to let their brand be represented by a website that is poorly designed, difficult to navigate or that has not been updated for four years?

In this day and age, for all types of businesses, their website is their most powerful sales and promotion tool. More and more people everyday are eschewing traditional outlets like the Yellow Pages or the newspaper and beginning their search for almost everything online. The businesses that get those customers are the ones who have websites, that much anyone knows.

But simply having a business website is not enough. If that website does not adequately represent your brand and its high standards, the visitors you do manage to attract are likely to click away again just as quickly as they arrived and with a bad impression of your business to boot.

So how do you tell if it really is time for you to start looking for web redesign services to help bring your website up to the standard it needs to be to be effective? Here are just some of the signs:

You Still Have an 800 Pixel Width Website – This is a dead giveaway that it really is time to redesign a website. It has been more than a few years since anyone’s monitor has displayed at an 800 pixel resolution. The monitors of today on average boast 1024 pixels minimum, more often 1280 pixels, and widescreens with resolutions of 1680 pixels and even higher are rapidly replacing the old 4:3 format monitors.

If you have a website that is this dated then unfortunately it is little more than a waste of perfectly good cyber real estate and a sure sign to anyone that visits it that it is more than a little long in the tooth. It may even be that you do not even really know what any of this actually means, a sure sign that a web resign is needed ASAP.

The Inability to Update or Add New Content – A few years ago businesses just wanted to get something – anything – up on to the internet merely to be able to say they had a website. They would commission some generic web design service to create them a page or two and that was it. The business owner had no idea how to update the site by themselves or add any new content.

Back then it didn’t matter too much but in the Web 2.0 world successful business websites are all about interaction and generating dynamic new content that will attract the attention of both humans and those all important search bots. If you don’t have access to your website to update or add content it is really time to hire someone to redesign it and then instruct you in its proper use.

Poor Navigation – If your business is website is hard to navigate you need to understand that the average internet surfer is not a patient person. They want to be able to find what they are looking for and find it quickly. If they cannot find it on your site then they will not waste too much time looking for it. Instead they will go and find your competitors website and see if that is easier to find their way around. If you hire a competent person to redesign a website they will be able to fix these problems before they start impacting your business in this way.

Too Much Flash – Flash animation that is. Big flash animations can look cool but they certainly slow your site down if used too excessively and that is something that will not only frustrate your website visitors but will do little for your stranding with Google either. Since the beginning of 2010 Google have made it clear that site speed is a part of their ranking algorithm and an increasingly important one. A website redesign will ensure that you have a site that is eye-catching and engaging without being so slow that users fall asleep at their screen.

Mistakes, Typos and Old Information – Are there areas of your website that you are perfectly aware are outdated and even very badly written but you have let them stay up there because you did not want the hassle of continually dealing with web developers every time you needed to make a quick change? If you commission a website redesign the developer can add a content management system that will allow you to update your site just as easily as you edit a Word document. 

As a small and mid-sized business owner, you need a Website Design company RIGHT for you in terms of both budget and results. However, there are so many Website companies out there and every one claims they are better than their competitors. How do you know which company is right for you?

Discover the 5 secrets of finding the affordable website design company who can truly save you money, and in the mean time, deliver great results for your business.

Do you have to commit to a lengthy contract? Absolutely Not! The contract is a money drainer. You are forced to keep paying for things they throw at you – whether you need it or not. Find a company that won’t require contract so you can cancel their services at any time without penalty. How fast they can get your business online? Many business owners have to wait for weeks before you can take a look at your new site. Your website is your life line. You need your business running 24 x 7 non-stopping. Find a company who can have your site up TODAY. Can you control every aspect of your own website? Many business owners assume they have to rely on so-called “Experts” to manage their website. Delusion! You need to control your web presence but you don’t have to learn a programming language or rely on the third-party. Find companies who allow you to make unlimited changes at any time to your website even if you don’t know the HTML. Is it only a Website Design Company or a comprehensive Web Solution provider? One of the critical mistakes small businesses make is to assume that as soon as they have a website; customers will suddenly start flocking to it. WRONG! Don’t wait to market your website online immediately. Ask the company what they can offer to optimize your Web visibility on Search Engines. Is Social Media Marketing offered in their services?Social Media is no longer a fun way for people to connect. It’s becoming a highly influential driver for your business to stay competitive. “Connect Online then Connect Offline” is the future of Internet Marketing.

In conclusion, I have seen many business owners spending thousands dollars but not getting much return on their investments. They keep paying hourly, weekly or monthly fees to so-called web masters, Web hosting companies, email marketing services, and SEO firms…

But you don’t have to! Knowing the secrets above, you will find the RIGHT web solution for you at an affordable price. Together, you and your one-stop partner will make your web presence the absolute monster in the dynamic world of Internet Marketing.

Yahoo! Web hosting offers the very best hosting solutions for small business websites. With Yahoo! Web hosting services, customers are offered hosting packages that perfectly befit their requirements and budget and can be customized to their needs. These hosting packages come outfitted with a wide variety of tools and features ranging from basic design templates, site-building tools to advanced PHP scripting. Customers also get access to MySQL database services.

In order to cater for diverse and website specific requirements, Yahoo! Offers the following web hosting packages:

1. Business Starter Yahoo! Web Hosting Services

This category of web hosting service offers 50 MG of disk space, 20 GB of data transfer and 10 personal email accounts. This option is ideal for beginners who are looking for a basic hosting package. The package also offers web-designing tools that are highly user-friendly and fun to use.

2. Business Standard Yahoo! Web Hosting Services

This category of web hosting services provides 100 MG of storage capacity, 25 GB of data transfer as well as 25 Business Edition email accounts. The customers also get access to 24/7 toll free customer support. In terms of superior business hosting; this category of hosting offers cost-effective hosting solutions.

3. Business Professional Yahoo! Web Hosting Services

As the category suggests, the Business Professional Yahoo! Web hosting services offers high-end, all-inclusive hosting solutions. This plan comes equipped with 350 MG of storage capacity and 35 GB of data transfer in addition to 35 Business Edition email accounts. Given the features, tools and services offered, this plan is quite reasonably priced. Customers also get access to 24/7/365 customer support, customized to the user’s requirements. In addition to other high-end and highly utilizable features and tools, customers also get access to advanced scripting tools, database as well as SSL support.

Customers need not worry about downtime any more with Yahoo’s web hosting solutions. Yahoo offers maximum uptime and this feature remains its prime forte. The very best servers and hardware in the hosting industry is offered by Yahoo web hosting services. Since Yahoo web hosting is supported by their search engine, downtime is not an issue with their services. Since their servers are linked through superfluous connections, downtime is a very rare occurrence.
Furthermore, its data center is within a highly secure facility and receives constant monitoring 24/7; thereby enhancing the reliability of the company.

This measure also aids in preventing hacking and/or other illegal occurrences.

The best part is that the company values its association with its customers and offers 24/7 technical support.

It is however a good idea to weigh and ascertain your hosting budget and website hosting requirements; before you go on to selecting their hosting package. Not every package would suit your website requirements. If in doubt, discuss with other users on discussion forums and blogs so that you can make a well-informed and wise decision. Analyze various factors like bandwidth, disk space, SSL support and other vital aspects of web hosting and your specific requirements before you zero down on a hosting package.