Appearing high in search engines like Google is becoming increasingly important for businesses as the online market grows. However, getting thousands of unique visitors a month is just half the story. Once the visitors are on your site, you need to ‘convert’ them – whether this means purchasing a product, contacting you for a quote, or signing up to receive your newsletter.

It’s important to have a clear goal of what you would like a visitor to do once they reach your site. It’s no good getting thousands of visitors if none of them stay on your site very long. Here we look at 4 simple ways that will help achieve your aims.

1. Calls to action

It’s amazing how many sites lack such a simple thing as this. A call to action is basically any text/information which explains to the visitor what we want them to do. They’ve read about your company – now what? “Call us now”, “click here for a free quote” or “buy our special offer” are all examples of calls to action. The more you have on your site and the more prominently they are positined, the more chance you have of a converstion.

See an example below of a website we have designed – note how clear and obvious the calls to actions are within the design.

2. Trust points

Selling from a website has a disadvantage from, say, a high street shop, in that your potential customer’s can’t see any ‘real’ people, they can’t touch the product they want to purchase and it may therefore be harder for them to make a judgment as to whether your company is trustworthy. Your website therefore has to have an abundance of ‘trust points’. These are visual factors that help to reinforce your business as honest, successful and professional.

Trust points can be a variety of things – we will look at 2 examples here:

Testimonials

Ask previous customers/clients to provide a comment that you can place onto your website. This provides feedback from ‘real people’ and, providing it is positive (!), helps to establish your company as one with high standards.

Accreditation Logos

Has your company been awarded with an industry relevant award or do you comply with certain industry standards? If so, why not place proof of this onto your website. Again, it will help to reinforce the message to users that your company can be trusted.

An example of trust points on a website:

3. Hard facts

Most people can see through fancy sales jargon – but what a lot of customers look for is some cold, hard facts. Why not carry out a bit of research – find out if your services increased a client’s sales by xx percent, or whether your product has been sold in xx countries. Facts like these can really help make more sales as people can place a real value on your services/products. These facts need to be displayed in a prominent place on your website. See below for an example of where we have done this for one of our clients.

4. Messaging

One of the most frustrating things to a site visitor is that after trawling through reams of text on your website, they’re still not really sure what your company does. Messaging is key – you only have a few seconds to comunicate with the visitor what your company does.

You should have a clear idea of who your target audiences are and the priority you would like to give to each target audience. The design of the site and the messaging should then be implemented accordingly.

See an example of one of our sites below – it is immediately clear what this company does.

5. Video 

Videos can bring a personal touch to your website and can communicate more information clearly in less time than it takes to read. Users are easily be put off by a lot of cold text, most people prefer to hear and see information in an expressive way than to read information on a page. A video brings the message to them in an exciting and more memorable way.

See an example of one of our sites below – a selection of video interviews attracts attention and bridges the gap between the you and the user, making the user feel welcome and the website more trustworthy.

In conclusion, it’s not sufficient to have a great design – the design has to have purpose and thought behind it. We hope this article has been useful. Do you think your website needs some marketing TLC? Contact us here for a free quote.

Related posts:

1. 5 Ways to Generate Interest in Your Business
2. Simplifying The Site Map
3. Attitude design the new Hallam Website

Recognise this? It’s Hick’s Law, which describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices he or she has. This idea is well worth reading up on especially if you have an e-commerce website.

What’s that got to do with e-commerce sites? Everything! The more choices you offer a user the more difficult it becomes for them to make a decision. Here are some top tips to use Hick’s law in your e-commerce website design:

Two Click rule

The more clicks a potential customer has to make before they start buying from your site, the more choices they have, the less likely they are to buy. So keep it simple and easy. No more than 2 clicks before they can start buying
Home Page offer. Get them shopping on the first page of your site to maximise purchases. Maybe feature a special offer or today’s favourite product or this month’s new product range.

Navigation.

Keep it simple and where possible use a good drop down navigation which allows customers to browse categories of products and get to where they need to be quickly.

Search box

If a customer knows what they want they don’t want to trail through loads of options. Make sure your search box is clearly labelled and easy to notice. Also ensure it works well pulling up relevant results.

Looking for inspiration? Here’s some really good e-commerce sites to get inspiration from:

• www.amazon.co.uk
• www.play.com
• www.hmv.com
• www.hm.com/gb

So make sure you are making things as simple as possible for your users and ensure they get to the product they need by following our simple tips…

Related posts:

1. Well Designed E-commerce Websites
2. E-commerce & CMS (Content Management Systems)
3. SEO Tool – Who links to me?

Here’s an acronym to help you remember the important features of a logo.  How well does yours do?

LOGIC.  A logo must have reasoning and purpose to work.  The font, the image, the letters, the colours, the impact must all have rationale.  A logo without logic is a sign without meaning, an empty symbol that shouts amateur and unprofessional.

ORIGINALITY.  A logo must enable your business to stand out and be noticed against the competitors in your market. It must be unique to you, personalised and individual. It must work in all its environs, from the handed out business card through to the website, your visible presence in the global market.

GREATNESS.  A logo must be strong, definite, have impact and tap into the viewers’ subconscious so that it is memorable and easy to recall. Just one look tells us who and what you are.  It’s your identity, persona out in the big, wide world.

OUTLOOK.  A logo or brand identity is what defines you. Strong colours, shapes and design reflect power and professionalism. Clear and simple design suggests a business that is well organised with straightforward procedures. Modern design suggests a company that is up to date and contemporary.

To see some great logos, visit our logo portfolio

Related posts:

1. Brand identity design
2. Branding
3. London 2012 Olympic Logo / A Disgrace

Well Ladies and Gents, you are now in for a real treat. We’ve invited the brilliant Wayne Barker from the SEO Experts Hallam Communications to write a guest post for us. Attitude Design have been working with Hallam for years looking to them to consult and help our clients with their search engine optimisation. Wayne has written this post for us web designers to help us all get ahead in the wonderful and mysterious world of SEO. Enjoy:

Wayne’s Top SEO Tips

For those of you in the web design and developer industry you are well aware of how competitive it is nowadays. Unless you only want to rank for location specific phrases (such as “web design +your home city” you may think there is no way you can compete with the big boys.

Working as an SEO I know this to be not strictly true – it may not be scalable that you will compete with in an instant, but with some hard work and patience (and the following tips) you can look at getting the SEO and backlink profile that will help you succeed. You will also find that some of these tips can be applied to your client’s sites as well.

All the tips I suggest are relatively easy to achieve but it requires patience to succeed. You need to just keep chipping away and success will come.

Wayne Barker works for Hallam who offer SEO and Internet Marketing to clients across the UK from their base in Nottingham.

Related posts:

1. SEO Tool – Who links to me?
2. Seven top tips to improve your website navigation
3. Simplifying The Site Map

Everyone hates getting lost. It’s nice to know where you are and what is around you. Unexpected dead-ends and one way streets drive us crazy! Therefore we use maps… (well at least we did a few years ago, now we use a Sat nav… but the sat-nav is based upon a map… !) Anyway – for the same reasons that we use a map to travel around town, web designers often ask for, or help their clients to, develop a ‘site map’ for a website they are being asked to produce. These ‘site maps’ help everyone know where each page on a website will reside in the websites navigation. A site map is therefore essential at the start of any website project.

Although site maps are actually quite simple, for people who are not working with websites every day the concept can initially be quite hard to grasp. We thought we would outline some basic principles of the site map to help anyone out there who is scratching their head over how to draw up a site map for their website…

The ‘Family Tree’ Site Map

A site map can be understood like a family tree. All the pages on your website are like one big family – each page is related to another page in some way and the site map shows how this works.

Pages in a website can be termed ‘parent’ pages or ‘children’ pages or even ‘grandchildren’ pages. As soon as the family tree concept is understood, site maps become simple.

At this point it might be worth noting that site maps deal with the pages on the website – not blog posts – which are completely different. Your blog posts will all sit inside your ‘blog’ or ‘news’ section and do not need to be mentioned on your site map. Pages are used for information which is timeless about your company e.g. the ‘About Us’ page, or ‘Our Services’ page etc. Blog posts are used for latest news updates about your company / products etc.

Working Example Of A Site Map

To illustrate how a site map works we will look at the Attitude Design website.

Here is the homepage – this is separate to the parent pages but on the same ‘level’. Think of it as the place where all the parents hang out.

The parent pages are all the main pages on the homepage navigation – in this example, this would be: Portfolio, About, Services, Journal and Contact.

Let’s have a look at how the site map would look so far:

“Children” pages are any pages immediately inside the “parent” pages. Here we look at the “children” pages for this website example:

Journal does not have any “children” – as there are only blog posts inside this area and the contact page is a ‘stand alone’ page – with no inner pages.

Now let’s have a look at how the site map has developed:

If any of the inner pages (or children pages) such as “Branding” had inner pages of their own then these would become “grandchildren” pages. In this example there are no “grandchildren”.

The number of “family generations” in a website affects the number of clicks a user has to make to reach a certain page. In this example, a user will only ever have to click twice to reach the deepest level of the website e.g. once on “About” and then again to reach “Testimonials”. It is recommended that a user should not have to click more than 3 times to reach any area in a website. In other words, having “great grandchildren” pages would not be ideal.

We hope this helps when you come to draw up a site map for your website.

Drafted your site map and now need a great design? Why not contact us for a competitive website quote…

Site Map Resources

Check out these great links which might also be useful to you:

• The Lazy IA’s Guide to Making Sitemaps
• 3 Reasons To Start With A Visual Site Map
• How to create a visual sitemap
• Make a Site Map of your Website with WriteMaps
• A visual sitemap

Related posts:

1. 10 Tips for Creating Inbound Links for your Web Design Site
2. 5 Ways to Convert Your Site Visitors
3. Attitude Design Joins Facebook

We came across this amazing video which introduces and explains why social media is so important for businesses today:

So – how well do you use social media? Are you engaging with your audience on the platforms they visit every day? Are you listening to their feedback and are you in a position to respond where appropriate? Do you have a strategy in place to build brand awareness across social media networks? Do you use social media to create a “buzz” around your products or promotions? If not – why not!?

Ensure that your marketing is integrated and make sure your brand voice is as consistent across all media – printed documents, website and social media. Ensure that your marketing strategy covers all areas of communication otherwise you may find you are missing a trick.

Just as most businesses have brand guidelines for how to consistently create printed materials, why not consider producing a set of guidelines for members of your organisation so that they can strategically use social media for the good of the business? If you need any help or advice with producing such internal documentation to ensure your business is performing within a strategic marketing strategy, give us a shout.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Strategy
2. Branding
3. 10 Design & Marketing Ideas for Your Business

HTTP 404 Not Found

That means the page you are trying to see is not there. Maybe the page has been deleted or moved. The standard page looks something like this:

“Yuk yuk” we hear you cry. That’s not very useful or appealing to a user. They will not stick around to find the correct page. If that user has come via a link form another website then it’s highly likely they will just leave. Whats the answer? How can we maximise the chances of keeping visitors who come across a 404 on our site? How could we convert them into a sale even?! The solution is to design a bespoke 404 page which fits in with the style and branding of your website. A page which contains useful information, maybe a search box and a few useful links.

You might also wish to add something a little comical to the title of the page to keep your visitor interested. On our 404 page we use the classic line “The page you were looking for has grown legs and run away”!

Some examples of well designed 404 pages

Here are some examples of what other websites are doing and hope you might find some inspiration for your own. Enjoy – and don’t forget to leave a comment…

BBC

The Beeb have a very simple but mildly useful 404 page. It explains whats happened and directs the user to the site index.

Value My Stuff

We love the copy on Value My Stuff’s 404 page. “Oh dear this is awkward” is witty and keeps the user interested in the site. the user is directed to three key areas of the site. Engaging and helpful.

Vimeo

This one is simple and offers up 8 key areas of the site to the user. There is also advertising which is not advisable as you normally want to retain visitors to your site not send them elsewhere. However if you are a site which earns it’s revenue on advertising space like Vimeo it makes sense to sell it on your 404 page as this will be a popular page as time goes on.

Twitter

Straight to the point! “Sorry this page doesn’t exist!” The user is then given a search box – this is a very helpful thing to offer as it encourages the user to try again to seek the page of their desire.

02

Simple and professional. This 404 page lets the user know what’s happened and even gives themes one of the reasons as to why they might be seeing a 404 page. They then give the user some useful links.

Last FM

Slightly witty with “woops, sorry this pages does not exist”. Again they give the user some useful links to keep them on their website.

Mail Chimp

Well what do you expect from the friendly and fun brand image that the guys at Mail Chimp have got going on? A huge monkey asking if you are lost! Just what you need if you hit a 404 page! It really adds to their brand identity and other links are then offered to help the user become found.

We also noticed if you refresh the 404 page a different message comes up – keeps the user continually interested even if they hit a couple of broken links on the trot. He’s a clever monkey that mailchimp.

istockphoto

A comical illustration with the words “Hang in there” is used by istockphoto as their 404 page.They offer a useful link to go back to the last page the user was looking at as well as a link to their home page.

404 Page resources

Ok so now you’ve seen how it’s done do it for yourself! Here are some resources which will help you to create your own custom 404 pages:

• A List Apart: the Perfect 404
• How to create a custom 404 page
• Web Weaver: How To Create a Custom 404 Page

Conclusion

So, by collating all the info from the sites above these are the options you might want to consider adding to your site:

• A witty comment and illustration
• A search bar
• Useful Links
• A link to the previous page the user was looking at
• A link to your homepage

We hope this post has been interesting and inspirational to you. Please feel free to leave a comment – perhaps you have got a brilliant 404 page which you would like to share?! Maybe send us your own 404 page after you have redesigned it after reading this blog post. Comment away!

Related posts:

1. The New Shop Window / Home Pages That Sell
2. SEO Tool – Who links to me?
3. Simplifying The Site Map

Whether you’re a new start up company, or one that’s been established for years, it’s always essential to keep the public – and in particular your target audience – interested in what you’re doing. More publicity will generally lead to more sales. Here we look at 5 ways you can generate interest.

1. Blog

Set up a blog on your website and post regular articles. This has several benefits:

1. It keeps your website up to date and dynamic – encouraging repeat visitors.
2. It establishes your company as an authority on the subjects written about – good for PR.
3. People can link into your posts which can help with SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Also most blogs come with RSS feeds – these can be used in many beneficial ways by you or your target audience. Click here to find out more »

2. Make use of email campaigns

There are 3 main types of email campaigns. If used effectively, these can create a powerful marketing strategy.

1. Auto responders - these are emails sent out at specific stages from initial sign-up. E.g. 5 days after, 10 days after, 3 weeks after. This can reinforce your company’s key messages in bite sized chunks after a person has signed up to receive emails from yourself for example.
2. RSS – these are emails which contain content from an RSS feed. They can work as an automatic monthly update on your latest blog posts for example.
3. Regular – a manual email sent out at particular times e.g. Christmas, Valentines Day etc. – ideal for advertising special offers.

Why not set up an account with Mailchimp where you can set these up yourself? If you need some templates designing or these setting up for you let us know…

3. Promotions

Everyone loves a bit of a ‘good deal’ and offering a special discount for a limited period of time will generate interest. Even if many people don’t actually go for the special offer, it’s an opportunity to show them what other goods/services you can offer. Why not get some advertising on some industry websites or run a pay per click campaign with Google? Whatever you do be sure to measure the impact of your advertising.

Create a page on your website all about your promotion and ensure you add key selling points, messages and prominent ‘calls to action’.

4. Social Media

If you haven’t got a company Facebook and Twitter page already then you should seriously consider setting one up. It’s easy to do and even better it’s a free way to market your company! With more than 75 million active users on Twitter and over 400 million active users on Facebook it’s an area worth tapping into.

Why not go one step further? We can set up Facebook and Twitter pages for you which are branded consistently with your company logo and if your website supports it, we can set up an RSS feed from your website blog to your social media pages. This will mean that whenever you post a new blog on your website – your Facebook and Twitter pages will automatically update with it. Now there’s a bit of a time saver for you!

5. Viral Video

A good way to create a personality around your brand and get people talking about your company is to create a viral video and upload it to YouTube. Generally speaking it should be a fun video which is not sales driven. A video with a really good concept will generate alot of viewers on YouTube and hence more public awareness of your company.

We hope these ideas have got you thinking. If you would like some assistance with your marketing strategy why not contact us today?

Related posts:

1. Has Viral Email Caught a Cold?
2. Attitude Design Joins Facebook
3. 10 Design & Marketing Ideas for Your Business

Most businesses will have a contact page – with address details, but have you got a map showing your location which is designed to be in keeping with your overall brand? Google maps is fairly good – however it is not easy to see at first glance where useful locations such as transport links are, and in addition Google maps are not consistent with your brand.

Attitude Design can create a street map – showing your location – with a zoom in of your office and highlighting key locations in the area such as bus stations and car parking. The map will be designed in line with your company brand – helping to increase consistency on your site.

A couple of our map design examples can be found below:

Contact us today for a competitive quote.

Related posts:

1. 5 Ways to Generate Interest in Your Business
2. Simplifying The Site Map
3. 10 Design & Marketing Ideas for Your Business

Here at Attitude Design we have found the email marketing service MailChimp to be a great service. It is free (up to certain limits) and easy to use. Please see http://www.mailchimp.com/ for more information. We can help you set up a Mail Chimp account and also provide design services so that your mailers are branded when they go out. We can also help with your e-marketing strategy. Contact us to find out more »

Here are some guidelines to help you create the perfect e-News!

1. Keep it Simple

Try to ensure that each eNews has just one message at a time. This makes it more powerful and ensures that the reader fully appreciates what you are trying to convey. People tend to skim read when reading from a screen and therefore if there are too many messages/pieces of information the reader will probably give up and miss any message that is there.

2. Utilize Key Dates

Make use of special days in the calendar to make your marketing more effective. Some examples are outined below:

Restaurant – Valentines Day menu, Christmas menu
Card/gift shop – Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc.
Gardening business – First Day of Spring, Summer etc.
Charity – Red Nose Day etc.

People are probably already looking for something in relation to those special days – so by getting your message out there you are increasing the chance that your target audience will choose YOUR business.

3. Provide a Way to Get in Touch

Always provide your contact details – or a link to your website’s contact page on your eNews. It’s no good advertising your services but then not giving people an easy way to get in touch. It’s also important to remember that people must have the option to unsubsribe from your email lists.

4. Utilize mailing lists

Create different lists for different categories of people – e.g. existing clients, potential clients, and so on. You can then target these different audiences with messaging appropriate to their category. For example a decorating business may want to send out an email advertising a special deal to anyone who ‘recommends a friend’ – however it’s no good including people on this list who may have once shown interest in your services but have never actually used them. Always ensure that people who are on your mailing lists have provided their permission for this.

5. Keep a Balance

Make sure you balance how often you send out your eNews – you don’t want to get annoying as this will have the opposite effect to encouraging business. At the same time you don’t want people to forget about you! Once a month might be the right sort of frequency to consider.

6. Design design design

Finally, as with most things, it’s no good having great content if it looks terrible – you need to look professional. Your eNews should be consistent with your brand image to ensure that people recognize your business. Attitude Design can design a template for your eNews that will work with MailChimp. This template can then be used again and again for all issues of your eNews – we can even supply a range of templates targeted at different types of eCampaigns.

Our eNews templates start from £250 + VAT – please contact us for more details.

Related posts:

1. Seven top tips to improve your website navigation
2. 10 Tips for Creating Inbound Links for your Web Design Site
3. 5 Ways to Generate Interest in Your Business

Why should I worry about what text is on my website?

Writing text for websites is often an area of web design that is overlooked at the start of a website project. It is though, perhaps as important, if not more important, than the website design. If, for example, you have a brilliantly designed website but it contained little textual content that was not relevant to a visitor – the chances are that that visitor will not stick around to simply admire the design. “Content is king” is the saying – and so it is. Add great, well written text, to a well designed website and you are destined for success.

If the budget is available we would always recommend going to a professional copywriter – this is not always possible and so many of our clients opt to write the content themselves. This makes alot of sense from a budgeting point of view and also has other benefits because you will always know your target audience and business better than a third party ever will.

So – what is the best way to write content for your website? How do you start and what sort of things should you be thinking about as you go through the process. Also what format should this content be supplied to your designers in? These and more questions are answered in this article…

Where to start

From a branding perspective it might be best to start from the point of view of how you wish to be perceived by your target audience. If your company was a person, how would they speak? Would they be to the point and ‘businesslike’ – or maybe more friendly and jargon free? Setting the right “tone of voice” and writing style for your website should fit in with your overall brand message and placement. Maybe have a look at other companies’ websites which are trying to attract similar markets to see how they are presenting themselves in their web text.

If you are working with a design company such as Attitude Design, you will normally have a “site map” developed for you. This should be a diagram showing all the pages on your website and how they interact with each other.

Before getting into the nitty gritty it might be best to sit down with the site map and to decide what the purpose and function of each page is. Most pages will fall into the following categories:

• Information giving
• Selling
• Signing up / Applying / Enquiring

Each of these pages have different purposes and require different types of writing to fulfill those purposes. Each of these pages may also have different messages which your text will need to support. Have a think about each of your pages in the light of their purpose and maybe mark on your site map your general ideas so that when you get started with the text for that page you have an overall idea of where you are headed.

Humans vs Robots

Most of us are used to writing for humans in emails, letters, text messages etc. Websites, however, are not only visited by humans. There are search engines which have little programs (tenderly called “spiders” or “robots”) which will vist your site and collect the data they find there. They will store this data in the search engine’s database so that when someone searches for keywords, your site’s data will be considered in their algorithms. Depending on how your site does in the algorithm you will appear higher or lower in the organic rankings.

Appearing high in search engines is a powerful marketing tool. You can reach audiences of thousands who are all looking for your product or service so it’s worth writing the content for your website in a way search engine robots can read it and use it.

Writing for Humans

Writing content on websites is very different from writing to people you know. For example if you write an email to a friend or colleague, it is likely they will read every word you put down. This is not the case with websites. People “skim read”. If they are not engaged within a few seconds they will move away from your site to find a site which is relevant to what they are searching for.

Jacob Neilsen, a usability expert has a few articles based upon some in depth research as to how users read the content of web pages. It’s worth going through them to get a better understanding of exactly how website users read text:

• http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html
• http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
• http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/

So how do we write content on our websites which is most likely to get a result? Here are a few tips:

• Use subheadings. Because users will skim read, it’s a good idea to use subheadings so that they can find relevant content quickly.
• Be concise. Use bullet points, clear and simple language which is not long winded. Do not use slang, or technical jargon unless necessary. Try to include one concept per sentence.
• Front-load content. This means that you put the conclusion for what you are trying to say first. This helps users get a jist of what is on the page and hopefully it will capture their imagination. There is nothing worse then reading a few paragraphs and realizing the page you are on is completely irrelevant.
• Make sure it’s interesting. Ensure the text is relevant and doesn’t go “around the houses” to get to the point. Write in an interesting way which will engage your audience.

Writing for Robots

Web designers with any wits will ensure that they code your site in a way which is search engine friendly. There are things which will be “invisible” to humans which will need to be in place to be successful – for example the content of the various tags in your page’s source code (title tags, keyword tags, description tags etc.) These should be in place as default and ideally you should also be able to edit the content of these tags and the content that appears on the page website yourself.

If you have a knowledge of HTML code you will be able to do this by hand. Most people do not have the time to worry about learning this complex language but there are other ways to edit this type of content without knowledge of HMTL. You will need a system to be built to allow you to do this called a “Content Management System” (CMS). It is a good idea to have such a system running your website because monitoring how your website’s pages are performing in search engines is an on going process which may mean continual updating to the site over time.

When a robot visits your website, it will look at the visible text and links on your page. From the words it finds there, the search engine will decide what your page is about and index its findings in its database. When a user searches that database the search engine will then feed your page into relevant searches. But how does it decide what your page is about?

One way is by looking at key phrases. For example if you have a particular phrase (like “hard wearing mouse mats”) repeated many times on the page then you are more likely to appear on a search engine for that phrase.

There are many other factors and each search engine differs in its algorithms but for the sake of this article we will give you a few tips on creating content which will help you to get higher in the search rankings. We would of course recommend you speak to professional SEO experts who can research what phrases or words would be best to include on each page of your website, as well as other strategies and techniques you could employ to gain higher rankings. A few general tips:

• Find a phrase. Consider what search engine users might type in as a search phrase/phrases to find the page.
• Use the phrase in your content. Ensure this phrase is used in the headings and content of the page. It might be an idea to repeat the phrase several times throughout the copy as well as in the main heading and sub-headings of the page.
• Use your meta tags. Add the phrases to your page title, description and keyword meta tags. You will need to do this through your CMS system or by coding the page with that information yourself.
• Use links. Add links in the body of your site to other pages within your website. This will encourage the search engine robot to crawl through these other pages of the site.

Conclusion

So – we hope this guide has been helpful. It’s all about balance and being aware of the different types of visitors to your site. Don’t go overboard with writing for humans and neglect the search engine robots – likewise don’t just write for robots and forget the humans! Get the balance right and you’ll have a great website!

Related posts:

1. SEO Tool – Who links to me?
2. 10 Tips for Creating Inbound Links for your Web Design Site
3. A Guide to Practical Typography

We came across these great YouTube videos from ehow and thought that our readers might benefit from them. We hope you find them useful and consider working with us to accomplish some of the ideas below. Enjoy!

How to Design a Business Logo

How to Make an Effective Brochure

How to Create a Marketing Plan

Business Design Tips : How to Design Personal Business Cards

How to Conduct Market Research

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2. 10 Design & Marketing Ideas for Your Business
3. Spot UV – Add class to your business cards

This article deals with the problem of message overload on the web and gives some reviews and advice as to the best ways to display your key message on your home page.

Multiple messages

The main complication that most businesses find themselves in is that they have multiple messages they wish to put across to their target audience. This normally leads to all of these messages being thrust into their home page website design – the outcome of which is that a website user has so many options and messages being pushed at them that they do not take in any and so press the “back” button of death and leave your website. If the researchers are right you have less than one second to convey your message to your website visitors. It is clear therefore that having lots of messages, all competing for space is not practical and can be detrimental.

The simple approach

The best thing to do is to try and formulate a list of your key messages. List them in order of priority – the priority in which you wish to present them to a website user. Once you have a list of priorities you can then apply them to your homepage design. You will notice in the website examples below that one singular message is being pushed above all others. It s given the priority, more space, and an image to communicate itself to the user. This message area will attract the most attention, but if it is not relevant to the user they will then look elsewhere on the page which is where the other messages come in. What is good about this technique is that the information is split up into bite sized chunks for the user to digest. The user is not bombarded by messages but will be able to take in the most important one. “Less is more” is a saying we could mention here!

Examples of clear messaging

Below are some examples of some successful websites who priorities their messaging and emphasize one simple message.

Apple

Boots

Next

Thorntons

Harrods

Flickr

If it works for these companies why not adopt this technique on your website.

The image

It is useful to note in most of the examples we have looked at so far, that images are also used to help assist the user in connecting with the key message being shown. For example if it’s a product which is given the priority – then a picture of the product is used. They say that “a pictures tells 1000 words” and so images therefore are very useful in engaging your audience and helping them to understand your message. Try and use relevant but engaging images which will attract attention.

The call to action

The call to action means the accompanying text which tells the user what to do about the message – it tells them what action to take. For example the message might be “save money today” and the call to action might be “click here to find out how” or “call us to find out how”. Your call to action also needs to be prominent and clear. For more advice on calls to action read our article Calls To Action – Click Here! »

Ability to update?

So, lets say you have designed your home page – added your message and launched your website. The message worked well for the first month or so but for some reason it is not attracting the interest it used to (you know this because you have website statistics like Google Analytics which tells you where users are clicking on a page). What could be the problem. Well in our experience it is normally because the message is stagnant. Users who revisit your website have already seen the message and after following the call to action, know it is not relevant for them any more. It is therefore important for this message to be updated and remain “up to date”.

Your website is your shop window – and like in retail it needs to be constantly updated to ensure visitors continue to be interested. More on this in this article: The New Shop Window / Home Pages That Sell »

If you already have a CMS (Content Management System) then you or your staff may be able to update your key message yourselves. If not then you may need to get a system in place (for a bit of a shameless plug – contact us »). Another way around it is by actually contacting your website designers and getting them to update it – this may cost you an hourly rate but it may reap great rewards. If you are busy, put a member of staff in charge of updating the site quarterly – it could keep your sales steady.

Conclusion

So – the message is – keep the message simple. Simplify and break down the information that you wish to give your audience and you will find that your homepage will be far more effective. Comments most welcome…

Related posts:

1. Calls To Action – Click Here!
2. Four Oh Four – The art of designing 404 pages
3. The New Shop Window / Home Pages That Sell