Have you noticed that most business websites use blue and white backgrounds for their websites? This is because the color blue evokes a psychological emotion of trustworthiness, success, power and professionalism. Meanwhile, white is associated with simplicity. Now what if a banking company opts to choose pink as its color scheme for its website? Would it still have the same professional feel as compared to a website with a color scheme of blue?
That’s why color choice is essential in choosing a web design. It is like an expression without words, telling your potential clients something about your company at first glance.
Color Combos is a great website to check color schemes. They have a color combination library that has thousands of color swaches to choose from. A lot of the color swatches available in their library are created by other users. The main attraction of Color Combos is their combo tester page that allows you to put together colors on your own or generate a random color pallete. Another feature of this website is their color ‘grabbing’ tool, which allows a user to check another website’s color scheme.
One limitiation of the website is that their color grab tool can only read HTML and CSS websites. But in general, the website’s a useful tool for previewing color schemes. Another plus for Color Combos is that its easy to navigate through the site, with clear-cut menu buttons on the page header and color tags on the side for easy access to color pallettes. I suggest you give this site a visit.
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The look of a website is vital. It represents your business online - how it looks like affects what your potential clients perception of what your company is. It also catches the attention of potential clients, making them stay on and read the content of your site. That’s why a web design is crucial to your wesite’s success.
It is easy to just pick a design available in the internet. But to have a successful website, their design choice should be well thought of. One has to consider several elements to have the best design that will suit their company well. To help you with this, here’s a short checklist on the things that should be considered when choosing a design:
Your Business
What is the nature of your business? Are you running a healthcare company or are you selling clothing lines? Choose a design that best describes what your business is.
Target Audience
Your target audence should be considered when choosing your design. They are the ones who will view the website, not you. Choose a design that would be most appealing and appropriate to your audience.
Browser Compatibility
There are several web browsers that are used worldwide. Make sure that the design you pick is viewable for most web browsers.
Navigation
There are a lot of cases when businesses lose clients because of hard to navigate websites. Choose a design easy to understand navgation buttons and make sure that these buttons are available throughout your website. Remember: people stay longer on a website if it is easy to navigate through.
Manageability
Do you have to constantly update the contents of your website? Or do you need a brochure-type website? Ask your designer if the design you want is compatible with what you need to put up on yourwebsite.
Content
What will you put in your website? Will you need a photo gallery of your products? Or will you put up a large amount of text? Choose a design that would best compliment your content.
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In 2009, around 24 million Filipinos are active users of the internet, spending an average of 3.8 hours a day in front of the computer. Worldwide, there are around 1.6 billion people online. With this much audience, it’s no wonder why a lot of business owners decide to go online.
Having an online presence is the fastest and cheapest method of advertising. Sure, TV commercials and print ads are effective ways of advertising your business, but these methods are usually too expensive (especialy for start-up businesses). Also, it only reaches potential clients in the local arena. But having an online presence enables businesses to reach a bigger market at a much lower cost. A single website that showcases your goods and services can be viewed by potential clients worldwide witin a few seconds - it’s like having an international product campaign without having to pay millions for advertisements!
Getting a website doesn’t take a long time. Just get a good domain name, a reliable web hosting service, and a professional-looking web design - and you’re all set.
Well, creating a website is only half the battle. Maintaining and updating your website is another issue. We’ll talk about this topic next time.
We all want to be at the top of the game, right? We want to be the first thing customers think of when they want something. If we can’t do that, we could at least be on top of search results. Thus we turn to SEO.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, has recently emerged as a potent weapon. Whoever stays on top of Google wins the game. But SEO is not that easy, especially if you’re fighting for competitor-rich keywords.Which is why we’re turning to local markets.
You see, Google and other search engines now have a localized counterpart. For example, Google has google.com.ph and Yahoo has yahoo.com.ph. And these local counterparts give different search results from the international (or US) version. In fact, Google’s engineers say this so nicely:
Google considers both the IP address and the top-level domain (e.g. .com, .co.uk). Because we attempt to serve geographically relevant content, we factor domains that have a regional significance. For example, “.co.uk ” domains are likely very relevant for user queries originating from the UK. In the absence of a significant top-level domain, we often use the web server’s IP address as an added hint in our understanding of content.
In a nutshell: if you’re a local company, you want more local customers to check out your website. Google will consider these factors when churning out search results:
Take note that .com is considered a US domain. So if you want to get an edge over the competition, get your local ccTLD. I’m not saying that this is going to improve your site’s SEO off the bat, nor am I going to ask you people to switch to a local webhost; hey, it’s your prerogative and it won’t affect branding that much anyway. But if you want to make an impression right away while giving you a better chance with your seach results, I suggest getting your local domain.
People try to go on the web and go global. There isn’t wrong with that, but think of the opportunities you’re missing for the local market. Now, I wouldn’t be one to preach which market is better. It’s your business, right? But if you ever want togo local with your website, here are a few tips so you don’t get lost in the noise.
If you’re going local, drop the .com. No, seriously. Okay, .com domains are reasonably priced and abundant, but to get the domain you want, it’s impossible. They’re everywhere, and they won’t let people remember your brand easily. Also, this applies to .net and .org too.
Same goes for .info, .biz, and all those other domains. Can we not get those domains, please? Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with those domains per se, but spammers have overrun those TLDs. And those domains are going out for pretty cheap.Do you want your business to look cheap and be associated with spammers? I didn’t think so.
Get the ccTLD. Most ccTLDs aren’t as crowded as .coms, and they let you stand out. And they will appeal more to the local market. But don’t worry, getting the local ccTLD doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck in the local market. A website can be seen and accessed internationally of course, but getting a local domain will help you access the local market easier.
Also, ccTLDs have an edge over other TLDs in Google searches, but that’s something I’ll discuss next time.
There are currently eighty million .com domains out there. Okay, it’s a pretty number to be in awe of, but take note that eighty million is also a number that signifies your competition. There are eighty million domains, that means there is a big chance that the domain name you want is taken.
Most people, when faced by the fact that their domain name is taken, they resort to a few solutions. In fact, it’s weird that people are resorting to bastardizing their brand name. Remember, people, your domain is also your brand name. Don’t go adding “e-” something to your domain. People will forget that. Stick to your brand.
Don’t convolute your domain with:
Now guys, tell me what bad domain names you can come up with!
NEXT: Go Local
The internet is big. Google has indexed a trillion domains as of 2008, and the world wide web is getting crowded every single day. Hundreds, if not thousands, of new websites show up. They all vie for attention of the thousands of people who log on day in and day out, and simply put, it’s a cacophony of noise out there.
You have to go beyond the noise.And if you want to create a web presence, you have to have a good domain name first. Something that people can easily remember.
But in choosing a good domain name, we always go back to the original problem: there are a trillion domains out there. Most good domain names are taken. Would you believe that all 4-letter .com domains are already taken? That just makes it harder to find the domain that’s right for you.
Now you believe that your product will change lives and that people will be clamoring for it and form long lines just to buy. You decide to sell it on the web. People are online all the time, poking each other on Facebook or telling the world what they had for lunch via Twitter, right?
Well, you have to make them go to yor site first. Just because you have a website doesn’t mean people will magically show up in droves. Let’s see: where are your customers? They’re too busy poking each other on Facebook or telling the world what they had for lunch via Twitter.
Now that presents a problem. They’re too busy. You’d want to be able to sneak up to their awareness, and you want to be the first thing they think of when they do something else.
This is why Web Ninja is here to help you. We’ll give you the best way to sell your products on the web. Ninja-like.
I shall guide you, young padawan, through this dangerous place called the Web. I shall imbibe you with the knowledge handed down through generations. Be Ninja-tastic. Follow me.
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