Many businesses, new or established, acknowledge the need for a website. But only a few really understand the positive or even negative impact that a website can have on their business. While finances are always important in the success or failure of a company, the website is one place that businesses should not believe that "cheaper is better". The website and online presence is the digital representation of a company. Imagine the impact a business would have on you if the entrance had a stack of old boxes, unkept walkway, cracked windows, dirt and grim on the outside doorways and window framing. As a business owner you would never want your business to be portrayed in such a way. The website can have a similar impact to your customers, while some well designed ones will invite customers, other poorly designed ones will cause customers to leave and never come back to the website and to your business. UNDERSTANDING WHAT YOU NEED Someone might say "I just need a website to get online", is someone who may not fully understand the impact a website has on the company. We have seen websites that is just made of text, because the company felt the need to "just" get online, but the site is aesthetically unpleasing and that the company image is not interpreted as it should. We have seen websites with just images and very little text, because the company wanted a image rich website, but now the visitor has no idea where to go. A year after the launch of websites who's owners had this mentality, now say that the website is not working for them, that the traffic is not happening and the sales and traffic are not being generated. There are many freelance website designers and website design companies, but there are only a handful that focus on user interface and user experience as an integral part of the design. What does this mean? Depending on your target market of visitors, how customers view your website and how they navigate will vary. While the aesthetics of the design is important, knowing who your target market is and how that demographic typically navigates a website will and should impact the design of a site. Hootland, Inc. has come across a few of clients who will say "Well, my target market is everyone", of course our next questions would be "Are you certain?". Let's say that you have an e-commerce website and your products are printed t-shirts, your demographic is geared towards the teen and young adult market. With a teen demographic your images of the t-shirts ideally would be worn by teen and young adult models, and not middle aged adults or by toddlers. The models selected would seem quite evident and logical. What may not be as evident is the way that this demographic navigates a website, colors that attract, imagery and style of the site, and even how to get the teen to come back or to share the product with family and friends. KEEP UP WITH TODAY'S TECHNOLOGY Another important element of website design and development is what device the website is viewed on. In the "old" days at the dawn of website design, we only had to deal with one browsing device... the computer. Today that is not the case, with the growing number of people with smart phones and tablets, websites of today's needs to mold to the devices used by visitors. What worked a few years ago in terms of design and interface has now become outdated. The newest design style is a website type called "Responsive Website", is one that has begun to sweep the website world. Rather than having to create two types of websites, one for the mobile devices and one for computer, this new type of design uses the latest technology of HTML 5, allowing the site to recognize the browser size and mold to the device used by the customer. It is easy enough to create a pretty website, but if users do not come back, cannot find what they are looking for, and ultimately transact with the website, what would be the purpose in having a website at all? So, before jumping to the cheapest design possible "just to get the website online", ask yourself how important is your business to you. Having a website is not just about the design or development, it is about you as a business.
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