5 Reasons Design Is Still Important

When considering your online marketing campaign it’s important not to sell yourself short on the total package by focusing too much on any one element. With many Internet marketing companies pushing natural and paid search efforts it’s sometimes easy to think a simple or template design will suffice. A well designed website not only gives you the ability to showcase your product in an aesthetically pleasing way, but when properly engineered can effect SEO, enhance well-written copy, and turn your visitors into paying customers. In short, these 5 ideas showcase why you should bring design to the front line with the rest of the team.

1.An aesthetically pleasing website is a sticky website

Great high res images, engaging flash elements, and a great color scheme. These elements may not be what your clients think of first for their online marketing campaign, but they are an important part of keeping potential buyers on your site. While many online marketers focus getting traffic to the site, don’t forget about these vital sticky features. I’ll preach website usability all day long, but if the site isn’t cool to look at, your website is lacking.

2. Good CSS is SEO friendly

CSS should be considered a standard for search engine friendly web design. If done properly, the styling elements of a website should be fully controlled by an external style sheet. Popular sites like http://www.csszengarden.com/ have inspired the design community to challenge what can be done with the style of a website. Clean, concise code on page will have your SEO team sending you flowers and chocolates. A website that separates your CSS from html markup makes it easier for search engine spiders to crawl your site and can give you that edge in the rankings.

3. Less Clicks, More Money

A great website will not only look incredible, it will guide users in the right direction to make a buying decision. The less convoluted the click path on your website, the easier it is for the customer to get to the checkout. A well designed layout should guide visitors through the site to give your product a fair chance. The design of your website should highlight the key areas to send your users to ensuring that the right customer is getting to the purchase stage. What’s more meaningful at the end of the day, a website with a million hits and $1000 of revenue, or a website with 1000 hits and $1 million in revenue?

4. Usability is King

Make sure to give proper focus to your websites usability. While paid and natural search marketing will drive traffic to your website, unless your website has well designed usability it could all be for not. Spend time researching the latest studies in effective website usability techniques. Keeping your site current with consumer trends can help prevent your site from feeling stale and outdated.

5. Details without Design

A truly effective marketing campaign need to focus all aspects including design. For example, imagine if Apple had not bothered to spend so much time on the appearance and usability of the iPod. Sure, they could have advertised all the great technical features of the device such as storage space, screen resolutions, etc. but then they would have no edge over their competition. By giving their product a very stylized design they gained an edge in their marketing that made their device synonymous with MP3 players.

Good design can go a long way in the customers’ eyes. If we give the proper focus to design, it will support the other aspects of your marketing campaign to give you the edge. Are these reasons the only factors in why design is so important? Of course not, but if we continue to make strides in website design and other areas closely related, then we can continue to work together with the other forms of marketing to make a product the next big thing.

Read more!

How Design and SEO work together

So the routine goes, you open your Internet browser, go to trusty Google then type in a specific phrase for a product or service you’re looking to purchase. This can easily result in more than a million relevant websites in return. The SEO team for your company spent months targeting specific keywords and climbing page after page to finally have your website appear on page one. After a click or two, you land on a website. GREAT, you’re finally there! All of the effort your SEO team has put into your website ranking has finally paid off. But has it? Dum, da dummm . . .


A great debate I frequently hear is Design vs. SEO. Which is the more important factor in creating your website? The debate can go on and on and I once thought that one prevailed over the other. The truth is they are equally as important. SEO technicians can spend countless hours marketing your website, but unless a visitor can successfully land on your website from a first page position and then successfully purchase a product or service that you’re trying to sell them, you have failed.

Make your SEO specialists happy by creating a consistent website that has a rock-solid design, unparalleled usability features (great navigation, great formatted copy, etc), and effective marketing elements (power phrasing in your flash headers, great Calls to Action) to help sell the product on your website. In doing this, everybody wins. Hooray! Your design team will have a cool site for their portfolio, your clients are making money, and your SEO team members won’t detest you since their efforts didn’t go to waste. Now let the harmony abound!



Read more!

800 x 600 Design - A Thing of the Past?

I hear many debates on whether a designer should create their websites for an 800 x 600 resolution or break the mold and cater to 1024 x 768. It’s always been a standard practice for me to design a small width site to cater to the majority. However, according to the resolution stats from w3school.com, about 80% of the market are not using an 800 x 600 resolution. Things are now changing…

But what does this mean for the hotel industry?

With higher resolutions, more information can be presented above the fold on your website. (above the fold is in reference to the information displayed on your website before you scroll down your page).

With a higher resolution, hotel websites can now:

* Showcase larger photography while still displaying important content
* Allow websites to display information with more variety
* Be unique – most hotel websites are still designed for smaller size resolutions

In the hotel industry, it’s all about standing out. Presenting more information to the end user will help your website stand out from the competition. A website enhancement this simple could really bring some additional business to your hotel.


Read more!