Does Website Design Matter?

There is a constant stream of advertisements for “create your own website” for free, after 30 days pay only $7.99/month or simple sounding ads like “Design your website in minutes.”

It’s sounds so easy and the price sounds unbeatable.  In the early days of the internet this might have been just the tool for many businesses.  As a web designer who codes these templates are cumbersome to use. For the novice they require a lot of time and frustration to learn the software.  You will still need your content: photos and page copy.  Your photos need to be optimized to download  quickly, so you need some photo editing skills and learn how to choose what compression is best.  You need to spend time learning at least some basic search engine optimization (SEO) and learn about meta data to compete for organic results.  All of the above are the nuts and bolts of using a template website.

Websites need “call-to-actions” which are eye appealing and well placed.  Navigation needs to be simple – easy to figure out so customers can quickly find what they are looking for.  Frustrated visitors won’t become your client.

Beyond all the code and functionality, yes, design matters.  A welcoming website sets a tone for your business, the same as a showroom displays your products.  The layout and design bring all the elements together.  The bottom line is people will judge your business based on the looks of your website.  Statistics reveal over 90% of people said they trusted or mistrusted a website based on design alone, less than 10% said it was content.

It’s much like packaging of food.  Yes the generic brand is cheaper, but the jar/box isn’t nearly as creative as the name brands, who give great thought and expense to their brand.

While it doesn’t have to be award winning you want your design to send a message of trust, professionalism and quality.  You know your business, hiring a professional to create your website is a good investment.

Do I Need A Mobile Website?

Do I need a mobile website?  It started out as a trend.  We know retail sites are seeing incredibly high traffic increase.  But what about the service industry? If your business garners emergency or urgent services, you risk losing business, already.  All service businesses should not ignore mobile because use is on the rise across all industries.  As mobile use rises continually a mobile ready website needs to be in your plan.

Statistics tell us mobile phone web users are “task oriented”.  Their searching is more likely to convert to action.  Mobile use varies on preference and also their bandwidth phone service plan.  Mobile websites are highly optimized for download speed, using far less bandwidth than your full website.  If a user’s preference is a mobile site, they likely will bounce off your full website in search of a lean mobile site.  Having a mobile presence is about improving the customer experience.  Don’t give a visitor a reason to leave once they have found you.

I have found the best course of action gives the control to the user.  Your mobile website is triggered when a visitor lands on your full website via a mobile device.  A link to view your full website is prominently displayed, and also a link to your mobile website is on your full website, should they choose to go back and forth.

While staying on the cutting edge and following every new device can be very expensive (thousands, tens of thousands) to maintain there are several other approaches far less costly, especially for website owners with small websites (20 pages and less).  It’s time.

Photographer’s Mobile Website

The object of a mobile website is to be very lean.  It reminds me of the days of dial up internet connections when web designers squeezed every pixel in an image as small as possible.  Mobile means lean — and not only shrinking images, but only using when necessary.  Once you have a banner – you’re left with little precious real estate for graphics.

So, what to do with a photographer’s mobile website, when his business is visual?  We decided on one image per page, with a main gallery page listing/linking to each photographic category (business photos, portraits, real estate, etc.) gallery page.  This gave the visitor a heads-up to know clicking through they would be viewing/downloading images.  Being respectful is important in creating a mobile website.  This offered the limited-bandwidth user a chance to opt out – or bookmark to view on their desktop.

Each gallery page has a maximum 6 images, and these were highly optimized.  It gives the user an idea of the photographer’s style and feel without a big bandwidth use.

Both the desktop site and mobile site easily let the user switch back and forth if bandwidth is not an issue.

mobile website