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There are good reasons why the layout of some web-sites appears to follow an unofficial set of design rules that guides location of the menus and content.

How visitors use your web-pages
Research into the way that people use websites called ‘eyetracking’ has revealed that users tend to scan in the first instance along the top of the web page from left to right and then down the left hand side of the screen from top to bottom.

These places correspond with the usual menu and headline locations and these would appear to be the places people look to gauge content and navigation links. The obvious place for your branding is in this area so visitors can recognise who the site is about and where the information comes from. The amount of time site visitors spend looking for the thing they want is tiny, measured in seconds, so make it as easy as possible for them to find what they want. Clear and concise link titles mean visitors stay with your site rather than moving on to your competition.

Get their attention with a strong headline
The headline is the next thing the visitor reads. It is the most effective way to grab their attention. Writing concise headlines can help visitors find the information they want quickly and keep them on your site pages.

Use typefaces carefully for maximum legibility
The fonts you use should make your text easy to read, legibility is key to helping visitors actually read the text on your site pages. Don’t mix lots of different fonts on a single page, stick to one or two so that all your pages are consistent and look as though they come from the same source.

Colour can draw attention where you want it
Use colour to draw attention to your headlines, or to pull out quotes from customers from the main body text. However, don’t use too many colours on any one page – it’s visually distracting to page visitors. Stick to one or two colours and consider using tints of them if you need variations. Using clashing colours on web pages make it less likely that visitors will read your text and raises the chances of them choosing to go elsewhere.

The designer’s favourite: white space explained
Incorporate blank spaces around your content so site visitors don’t have to struggle to find what they want in a clutter of things. You don’t want your site pages to resemble a jumble sale where locating the right thing becomes a chore because this will drive away site visitors. Clear space also acts to draw attention to the most important things on the page, for example:

Any paragraph of text with wide margins assumes more
importance because it is isolated on the page.

For more impact, just add images
If you add pictures, choose ones that enhance what your story, illustrate your product effectively and show your visitor the thing they are searching for. Beautiful pictures are attractive but on their own they may not hold visitors on your website unless you happen to be selling the images as art. If your business is in the service industry associate your pictures with people, they could be your staff, your clients or stock images of the kind of people who might be interested in your service. This helps visitors to identify personally with your service and guides them to imagine using it.

Show off your business with the best possible images
A professional photographer will take pictures with better composition and lighting than any amateur snapshot, investment in good quality photography will give your web-pages a professional image for your business to present to potential clients.

Finding images that don’t cost a fortune
If you can’t afford a photographer there are sources of professional quality photographs that can be obtained from stock photography websites. Prices can vary, as can the quality of the images, and it is a good idea to check out several sites and browse the images they hold, before making any purchases. Check the terms and conditions of the site and make sure that any images you buy can be used freely on your website or in your printed materials.

Useful links:
Blogpost: Why you should update your website little and often
Blogpost: Your business is unique, let everyone know why
Webpage: The Create Design Studio Website Design and Build Service

As markets contract businesses need to maximise their promotional activities and make every promotional pound count.

Strategies for updating your website
Our advice to website owners is to carry out modest updates and additions on a regular basis rather than major annual updates and overhauls. This is because search engines, such as Google, love fresh and updated content and making modest monthly changes to your website will heighten their interest. Regular updates will also encourage visitors to return as well.

But don’t fall into the trap of updating for the sake of it.

Making your updates more effective
Whatever content you add or update on your website, it must be of interest to your customers and relate to the problems and issues they face. Unless you are a market leader, it is unlikely web surfers will be particularly interested in you or your business. What will be of interest to them are helpful tips, free advice and solutions to solve their problems, make their life easier or businesses more profitable.

Write about THEM not YOU!

Spread the cost
The little and often strategy can also help your wallet by spreading the cost over 12 months, rather than having to budget for a large bill.

What are your options for updating your website yourself?
If your site does NOT have a Content Management System (CMS)? An alternative solution to adding a CMS to your website is adding a WordPress Blog, for maximum benefit the Blog should be hosted as part of your website under your domain name.

The cost for us to install a WordPress Blog and integrate it into a typical website, following its design and style, is £595 ex vat. (for more information on our blog services see our website.)

Software to help you with updating your website
If a Blog does not appeal, you can buy a web editing software package. We recommend Adobe Contribute CS4, it isn’t expensive and you can buy it directly from the Adobe website. It is very simple to set-up and use, it will allow you to update and create new web pages, including photos, PDFs and media files. When you hit the publish button it will also upload any new photos and PDFs etc to your site.

We provide full support for Contribute and can assist with setting up the software, as well the provision of templates for creating new pages. In our experience it takes no longer than half an hour to teach someone how to update their website using Contribute.

For those site owners who don’t have the time or don’t feel confident about doing the updates themselves, we offer fixed priced packages that are paid for on a monthly basis by standing order.

Call David at Create Design Studio on 01962 737989 for more information.

Useful links:
Making your website work harder for your business
Create Design Studio Website Design and Build Services

In short we think that building customer confidence in your ability is made easier when you demonstrate your ability by writing about what you do and publishing it for free online using a blog.

What is a blog?
A blog is a collection of web pages that can easily be updated without the need to seek help from a web designer, programmer or use any special software.

Most blog software is free to download and easy to use and once you start writing, unlike on a normal web page, your readership can publish comments on the blog making it a truly interactive communication tool.

Why blogging will benefit your business
There are two answers, firstly it is a no cost option to keeping your website up to date. Secondly Google and the like love fresh content and a regularly updated blog, published as part of your website, will keep Google coming back for more and improve your rankings.

Your blog can also become a stream of links that you can promote using Twitter and a Facebook page for your organisation, spreading your words further than your website and blog can manage alone.

A blog will help show potential customers your abilities
Use the informative, relaxed style, of a blog to give your company a more personal and friendly online voice, than may be appropriate on your website. Build trust as you provide relevant news and views on issues that matter in your industry. You may also find your blog acts as a magnet to draw in new readers who then move on to your company website.

If you want to create an online information resource centre for your company a blog is the perfect tool
Some large companies also use blogs to encourage their employees to share information and expertise with one-another to build a shared knowledge resource. The software used for blogging also doubles as a content management system that allows you to give customers the most up-to-date information on your website.

A blog can help with the SEO of your website
Finally, using blog postings to update your website will cost you nothing (unlike using a web designer) and will boost your search engine rankings as websites that are updated regularly are ranked higher than those that aren’t.

Do you want a unique blog template that compliments your business branding?
We have installed blogs and designed bespoke templates for many of our customers. We can get your blog up and running in just a few days and we are happy to show you how to begin, as well as upload photographs, video clips and create links to other websites.

Do you want to know how to integrate your blog with your main web pages, your Twitter account, Facebook page and any other networking websites you use? We have the answers. Call Create Design Studio today on 01962 737989 to get started.

There are three really important Meta Tags that will help get your website found by search engines: the Meta Page Title, Keywords and the Meta Description.

The Meta Page Title appears in the bar at the top of a browser window, in the case of Microsoft Explorer it is the text that appears immediately before the wording in the blue bar that says Microsoft Explorer. Most search engines place a lot of importance on this title when ranking web pages, so you should ensure that you have a unique title for each web page and that it contains your top search phrase for that page.

The Meta Description, is as it sounds, a description of what that particular web page is about. It is also the text that many search engines use to describe the web page in their search results. Again this is an important Tag that can help get the website found. Like the Title Tag most search engines do read these descriptions and place a lot of importance on them.

Meta Descriptions should also be written with real people in mind, as a well-written Meta Description can attract people to click on that site when faced with dozens of listings on a results page, even if it is listed towards the bottom of the page.

The Keyword Tag started life as the place to put all the phrases that you wanted your website to be found by, however many website owners found that they could out smart the search engines using them, most search engines no longer pay much attention to them. However some do use them and most will check to see if they have been included, so it is important to include them.

Keep in touch with your customers and promote your website at the same time
Any correspondence that you send from your organisation to a customer can also promote your website. Think about printing on your envelopes, having printed headed letter paper, printing your website address onto your invoices, comp slips, flyers and anything else you post out. Also have an email signature with your website address on it, these can be updated easily so you can always promote whatever you are doing online to any clients you communicate with via email. If you hand out any promotional items like pens, postcards or notepads then have these printed with your website address in addition to your logo.

Create Design Studio offer a range of new media marketing services, and we have years of experience designing and building websites and blogs, speak to our MD, David Woodroofe on 01962 737989.

One of the processes Google uses to position your website on its results pages is to count the number of incoming links from other websites into yours.

Rightly or wrongly Google assumes that if other website owners have taken the trouble to place a link from their website to yours, your website must be of interest. The more incoming links, the greater the interest, thus the more important your site becomes.

To maximise this effect, it is a good idea if you can encourage linking site owners to use your keywords or search phrases in the anchor text (the words you click on to activate the link) on their sites.

For example rather than using ‘Click Here’ in a link to the I to Eye website, it would be better for us if the anchor text was ‘website design’ or ‘powerpoint presentation designers’ and the links went to a specific page rather than just the home page.

Recipical links, that is when a site owner links to your site for a return link to their’s, don’t help your search engine ranking. Google assumes, that rather than based on the interest of the sites’ content, both site owners have enter an agreement to add the links.

However if they help generate additional traffic then they should be encouraged.