Website Design Tips

1. It's is not recommended that you have your website fully designed in flash as search engines such as google can't read text done in flash. Search engines need to be able to read the text in your website so your website can be found when people type in key words that appear in your website. Although if you'd still like some movement to your website I recommend adding a flash banner title bar to your web page and flash links. Flash intro pages are not a good idea either as they usually take a while to download which is annoying and search engines cannot find any keywords in your first page of your website which is very important in order for you to be found in the search engines such as google.

2. It is highly recommended that your website designer also knows how to optimize your photos for the web as to ensure crisp clean images. I see so many websites these days with poor looking grainy scanned in images.

3. When you choose a graphic designer or website provider make sure they can do everything you will need them to do in the future. Do they offer e-commerce websites as well as flash and .html websites, .php scripting, product photography, product packaging design, logo design, business card design, sign design, ad designs, printing etc. If everything for your business from letterheads to signs to websites are done by one business it makes things less complicated, more cost effective and less time consuming as you don't have to email files to all different companies and deal with many different people. This also ensures that your designer can keep in mind all the different ways you will need to use your logo or website etc. so they can be designed in the correct format from the start to save you time and money in file and design conversions as graphics need to be sent in many different formats depending on if it is for T-shirt logos or raised ink printing or the web etc.

4. Make sure your web designer knows how to correctly identify and insert your most searched meta tags for your web page. Meta tags are keywords placed in the coding part of a website that allow search engines to retrieve your keywords thus directing traffic to your website when someone searches your key words in google or other search engines. For example: I use the key word website design as well as many others in my meta tags because I want people who search for website design to view my site. There are also many more things that can also be done to your website to ensure better search engine ranking but I cannot reveal all my secrets!! I can however optimize your site to ensure excellent ranking for your most important keywords.

5. Do your research before you hire someone to find out if they can update your site on a regular basis in a timely manner and what their hourly rates for updates are. You don't want to find out later that their update rates are ridiculous or they take weeks or months to do simple updates!

6. Find out if your website designer provides website hosting as well. This makes things easier for everyone involved once again if your website designer can design and host your website and set up your email and domain name accounts. This way, if there is ever a problem it means there are once again less people to deal with.

7. Make sure your designer is not subbing your website job out to another company as this proves to cause more miscommunication when dealing with too many people in the construction of your site. Many companies are now subbing their websites out to India and other foreign countries due to their cheaper rates. This not only hurts our economy but causes communication problems due to language barriers and distance constraints. Make sure you know exactly who will be working on your website and speak with them directly. This helps in getting things right the first time once again saving you time and money.

8.Do your due diligence and look at competing websites to get an idea of what look and feel and design you'd like to convey on your website.

More tips are coming soon...stay tuned!