Why Website Design and Presentation Matter?

A well-maintained and well-updated website is one that people will visit again and again, and one that new visitors will find interesting. With every update and face lift, however, a website should be well designed and well presented. As web experts say it, on the World Wide Web, content is king. This means that no matter how sophisticated your flash animation is, and no matter how skillful or colorful your graphic design is, your website will be ineffective if it is useless content wise.

However, the importance of content does not completely excuse web designers from performing their duties. In fact, marketing strategies incorporated with an attractive web design should go hand in hand with useful content; "content is king" simply means that web designers should not stop at making their websites simply gorgeous to behold.

If you are a web designer, you are probably aware of the need for a good looking website at an artistic and user-friendly level; but did you know that there is actually a psychological basis for producing an attractive website?

According to experts, the human brain needs only three seconds to be attracted to a website. If a website is not visually attractive, and if it does not grab a person's attention in three seconds or less, then the web surfer will leave the website and that website's content, no matter how useful, will be for nothing.

Not only should your website design be attractive, it should also be consistent across different browsers and operating systems. Because of differences in underlying software design, some websites will appear different in some browsers: colors could look different, some animation will not work, and some scripts will not load properly. When designing websites, web designers are always warned to make pages that are simple but attractive enough so that they will not run into any cross-browser issues.

Aside from cross-browser consistency, a website should have consistency within its pages. A common mistake beginner web designers make is creating different designs, thinking that shifting from one layout to another makes a website amusing or interesting. Never fall into this trap!

Most website visitors want to see consistency and a familiar layout that is easy to navigate no matter where they are in the site. If each web page in your website looks like it's from a different site altogether, then you are in big trouble.

Think of the power of the human eye when you design your websites. Any contrasting colors that are painful to the eyes will cause your website visitors to blink once, look away, and click away from your site. You want visitors to stay on your site longer. And this can only be achieved if you have a web design that pleases the eyes of your visitors.

Lastly, a website's presentation reflects its goals. If you are looking at the website of a serious company, you expect to see a formal website with few animations; a layout with the company colors; and text that talks about the company, as well as its products and services. A website is a company' spokesperson online, so it has to be presented as a representative of the company, not as a representative of the web designer's whims.

A well designed website should act not only as a repository of information, but as an advertisement. With a well-designed and easy-to-navigate website, some companies can actually succeed, both online and offline.

Why Your Website Should Get a Facelift?

How your website appears is almost as important as what it contains. All the information that you can give will not matter if you cannot present it in a manner that is easy to read and easy to find.

If you are in charge of making a website, moreover, you are also in charge of maintaining it. You are therefore tasked to change how it looks from time to time, as well as to update its content.

If you are working for or own a company or business that is constantly changing or giving out information to website visitors, then it is easy to understand why you should constantly update website content.

But why should you change the way that a website looks? Succinctly put, a website that looks the same from day one is boring, and you can lose a good many visitors if they still see the same color, format, and content day in and day out, month after month, year after year. It is important to give your website a complete overhaul and facelift now and again.

A website will look different on different browsers. Moreover, because browsers are always updated, the way your website looks now may be different from how it will look in the future.

In other words, a color scheme or general layout that might be effective or attractive today might be boring, or even jumbled up by the time the newest version of the browser comes around. You will always therefore need to take a look at your site and update its appearance, especially when new versions of operating systems or browsers are released.

A burgeoning area of web design is accessibility, or designing a website so that it can be read or viewed even by those who are color blind, deaf, blind, or who have other impairments or disabilities that might make website viewing challenging or difficult.

There are new guidelines released every now and then to guide webmasters and web designers in creating accessible websites, so you may need to change the look of your website constantly in order to cater to this special sector of your market.

If you are in charge of a company's or business' website or own and manage your website yourself, you will most likely be working with or in the marketing department. It is routine for the marketing department to constantly ask for customer feedback, and to use this feedback to improve or add products or services, or to change gears in terms of marketing strategies. Such feedback can include comments on the way a website is presented, how accessible it is, and how useful its content is. You will need to use this information in order to change the look of your site and make sure that it adheres to customer standards.

Lastly, as technology advances, so will web design. In the past, many people used modems to connect to the Internet. A modem uses a slow dial-up connection, which can make websites with heavy animation and graphics load much slower. As the faster broadband and wireless connections grow more popular, however, you may see the day when you can put new animation and graphics on your website without worrying if your customers will lose patience while your website loads.

The World Wide Web is an essentially visual marketplace, so how your website appears is important. Just be sure to change it regularly and update it constantly so that you do not only keep your old customers, but gain new ones as well.

To get your very own Website Facelift, request a quote today!