subject: The Importance of Having a Modern Web Site Design [print this page] The Importance of Having a Modern Web Site Design
This article will offer advice to business owners on building successful websites that market products and services effectively. The typical commercial website gives information about the company, where it's located and what it offers. The owner then inserts some ad copy to entice the reader to take action - contact by e-mail or phone, or buy something on the spot. This ad copy is often relic and dusty, created years earlier when consumer reactions were less sophisticated. There is a temptation to get more mileage out of the copy in order to save money.
Unless you've been stranded on an island somewhere you've heard the phrase "Content is king" in the worlds of web design and search engine marketing. There's also the old English saying "A penny wise and a pound foolish" when referring to somebody who loses a lot by saving a tiny amount. Outdated ad copy should be re-examined and thrown out if it doesn't conform to marketing requirements as suggested by market analysis companies. People don't react the same way anymore to exclamation points, contest prizes, flashing banners, etc. so the site must re-designed to a more straightforward and easy-to-understand format with short paragraphs, dividing the page in half so that the reader's eye focuses on important information. Modern website design should be built around the content with a simple layout using soft background colours, big text, centered orientation, strong colour and effects used sparingly.
If the site owner doesn't educate himself on how to present a clean site he won't consider it necessary and simply go the cheapest route: the status quo. His thriftiness will make him his own enemy. He will even have a part-time designer butcher the HTML content with guesswork and false assumptions; worse yet he might put his own ideas in the meta tags, inserting hundreds of what he perceives to be keywords all over the place and putting information about specials and things like phone numbers and domain names. Since only search engine spiders read these sections, one wonders how a computer program will take advantage of the sale prices.
It's certainly a good idea to be careful on how money is invested into a business so a competent designer should be chosen at a reasonable price. Let's take for instance a business located in Southern Ontario who wants to change the design of his current site. He may be located in the largest city, Toronto. He does a search for "web design Toronto" and phones some large web services companies who deal with manufacturers and other fairly large clients so he finds their prices very high due to high overhead, sales commissions and the profit margin for the company. He may try a little farther out instead of downtown and enter a search for "web design Oakville" or "web design Mississauga" in order to find a more modest company with lower prices.
Now our thrifty businessman is looking at some portfolios. The way he should do this is to look at competitor sites in the same market sector, pick some that look good, and ask if they've done anything in a similar vein. They show him that they have and give him some ideas and a quote for a modern design. The quote is lower and this is the point where he should order the work but he still can't get the tears off the credit card and make a commitment, so he tells them he'll think about it and call him back in a month. That month usually turns into three or four months and still he can't bring himself to order the work.
Let's say the business owner makes an average net profit of $250 from every customer that he deals with. One year earlier he shopped for SEO and turned down a quote for $3000 and the latest design quote was $2000 so he has avoided spending $5000. A competitor has done all those things the year previous and appears top five in the SERPs on the majority of major keywords. He is obtaining 10 new paying customers each month from the organic search results, making a net profit of $2500 per month. It took three months to reach the top five so in the nine months of good rankings he has made an extra profit of $22,500 in those months that the tightwad fellow was clinging to his pennies. The lack of knowledge, suspicion, and cheapness displayed by the procrastinator has cost him $17,500 in the first year of this scenario.
Just as you wouldn't run a respectable business out of a chicken coop, your web site shouldn't be a mish-mash of uncoordinated ideas and gibberish when you present it to the public and the search engines, for it will not survive in times when the economy is sluggish and every advantage is needed to take your share of the market.
