5 Vital Components of a Successful Website Re-Design

While every web designer has a different approach when it comes to website re-design, many top website design professionals have a common list of essential components and steps in the process. Although many seem obvious, these elements define some of the things that users expect in today's savvy digital age in order to use a website with ease.

A website re-design usually goes beyond upgrading the website with a new look and feel. It’s an opportunity for many businesses to reposition their online brand and conversion funnel to better increase sales/leads and overall profitability. If you're undergoing a website re-design, or thinking about revamping your site, then stand behind these 5 vital web design components to ensure a successful process and exceptional outcome.

1. SEO-friendly Coding

When it comes to HTML and developing the sites back-end, it's important that the website design (or developer) understands at least some of the important basics of SEO-friendly HTML coding. This is a process of redesigning your website's coding to give it an advantage of faster load speed, more efficient crawling and indexing, and better overall search engine performance.

Secondary is selecting the ideal keywords to optimize your site. This should be based on the relevance of your topic, low competition, and high usage. Once you have done this, you can start the web design process of redesigning the website. Remember, if you do not understand this aspect of SEO it will be very difficult to achieve your website re-design success.

2. Call to Actions 

After defining your website audience, it’s very important that you understand what you want them do while on your website. This is why you should have well-defined conversion goals and call for actions to drive action. Proper call to actions and conversion funneling is an essential part of a successful website re-design.

Some examples of call to actions platforms that you can use include social media, email newsletter, PRP form, among others. If you want someone to sign up for your newsletter, you should have a sign-up form indicating the advantages of the newsletter. Strategically placing this on your website will encourage potential customers to take action. You can also use Google analytics to track these actions.

3. Aesthetics

Any business website design should have a clean, well-branded design and appearance. This will come out well when the colors on the site match, the layout brings unity, and the graphics blend well. Unfortunately, many designers always overlook the color petite of the site.

To come up with the best color you should base your selection on the understanding of the color wheel and the proven color strategies. Avoid blasting your visitors with a lot of information with the hope that this will convince them to take action. Instead, provide less content and an open space so that they can explore your website with a lot of ease.

4. Responsive/Mobile-Optimized Website

With the increase in mobile devices, a mobile optimized site is now a must have for any website design. You may choose to redesign a separate website that only suits Smartphones.

Alternatively, you may redesign your main website so that it can respond to all devices including Smartphones, tablets and desktops. You should choose this based on the complexity of your website and the availability of the money because redesigning a responsive site often cost a lot of money. To make sure your site renders well on mobile devices, use Google's mobile-friendly test tool.

5. Custom Graphics

Although you may have a functional website without any graphic elements, if there are other similar sites that employ graphics, they will definitely get more traffic than yours. Ensure that you re-design your website with good images and graphics that are custom tailored for your brand and marketing objectives.These images must support your website and communicate the message that you are trying to relay to the customers. Before re-designing your website you should take some time to search the web.

Final Thoughts

Having a good website design will not only make your website look pretty but is also a strategic plan to drive more traffic to your business. A well-planned website could be a new business machine that generates lots of traffic to your firm. To ensure that you succeed you must implement professional design components.

Web Presence Management: A New Approach to Online Brand Building

There is search engine optimization (SEO) and social media but what is "web presence management?"

Web presence management is a more strategic and holistic approach to internet marketing and online brand building. How so?

Consumers interact with businesses online via different methods. Consumers are searching, socializing and generally browsing about the web through many different portals. These activities are being done on thousands of sites, social media and search engines. Web presence management helps to ensure that potential customers are exposed to a given brand through various means during their online exploration.

The Evolution of Web Presence Management

The practice of web management has evolved significantly over the years due to the power of search engines and web optimization. This practice culminates all digital marketing channels and online touch points and how they merge to influence visibility and brand awareness.

A strong perception of diligent research, market empathy, thorough execution and creative planning are the fundamental characteristics that result to a powerful web presence. Currently, there are thousands of internet marketing services soliciting small enterprises each trying to sell a piece of the digital landscape and claiming their method is the superior one. These methods go by various names but they have a factor in common, they are paid placement on a site, search engine or directory.

Elements of Web Presence Management

Some of elements that can an online brand can take advantage of when pursuing web presence management include the follow.

Paid Search Advertising (PPC)
Paid search advertising is also referred as pay per click or PPC advertising. This is an internet advertising platform used to drive traffic to sites where advertisers pay the owner of the site (publisher) or a search engine when the ad is clicked.

In other terms, it is the amount spent to get an ad clicked. Advertisers bid on keywords (with search engines) relevant to their target niche while content sites charge a fixed price instead of bidding on keyword phrases. The advantage of PPC is that it clearly shows how effective advertising is, clicks measure interest and attention of people.

Social Media Marketing
At least two billion people are on social media with the leading sites being Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr and so forth. According to statics, social media has penetrated to an estimate of 71% in all regions, 1 out of every 4 people log onto their social accounts at least once daily, according to Worldwide Social Network 2014 report by eMarketer.

Looking at these figures, the amount of visibility a business can get using these kind of media is immense. A key factor to note is that brands that regularly use social media and respond to customers queries get a higher consumer confidence thus converting traffic to sales.

Content Marketing & Blogging
Content marketing is one of the ways to achieve web presence management hence the phrase, Content is king. A business should create a blog and generate content relevant to the business’s objective. This method won’t work unless the content is genuine and grabs the reader’s attention thus bloggers should take time to sit and write quality articles that users would find useful.

In conclusion, the objective of web presence management services is to build and sustain a trustworthy, credible and nicely-promoted online presence visible in both search and social media. The success of a business’s web presence will depend on how dedicated they are in utilizing the above named aspects to realize their full potential.