How to Make a Website Customer Friendly

How do online customers use the internet? It’s an easy question, however a question many small-business owners forget to address while working on their website.

Far too often, web design firms get so focused on the latest tech innovations they lose sight of the basic and often simple needs and expectations of their potential customers.

From ipads and smartphones to oversized video display units and laptops, how do you deliver your message to your customer online today? Is the site easy to understand and easy to navigate?

If you have a website, you must have some kind of metrics or analytic programs available to you. This is a easy way of tracking visitors on your website, as well as an additional feature offered by most applications  to review browser information. This gives you reliable insight into what internet browsers and operating structures your clients use and what they see on the screen set on their monitors. These analytics can assist you in making  a decision to upgrade your site to deliver content that displays properly regardless of the device being used to access your site.

Mobile Friendly

When your website is visited on a mobile web browser, how does it look? Does the information you want to deliver visible without having to move their screen? Here are a couple of things to bear in mind while thinking about the effectiveness of your website.

The first thing to remember is that photo-heavy websites take longer to down load on mobile phones. The second one is that flash animation can’t be properly displayed on all phones.

However, you don’t have to sacrifice special features on your business website, but you may want to discuss with your website developer ways to create the responsive design version of the site for your mobile audience. With studies showing some 60% of internet searches now being done on a wide variety of mobile devices, proper display of the site to those visitors is crucial and simply can’t be ignored.

Print style

Most websites built before about 2012 were designed with features meant to work well on a desktop or a laptop screen, including being able to print out relevant parts of the site. But with the huge growth of mobile internet, and the fact that mobile may involve a wide range of platforms, with updating the site many people in your target market may find no way to print your pages or articles. This is a simple fix but may be an expensive mistake if not addressed. You may want to provide this option if you have details on your site that clients would want to print. This is a feature important to many types of online businesses such as magazines, restaurants displaying menus, educational and informative site and often just basic information about you or your products and services.

User Style

You may have intended to have website convey a certain look and feel, but consider this: how many different devices are visiting your website and not being able to experience that look and feel you intended when the site was first built?  There could be a large portion of your target market not getting what you wanted them to have resulting in the loss of potential sales all due to a simple upgrade.

Ease of Use

A lot of online sales is about showing your clients that you understand them and are flexible to their needs. Begin that conversation by giving your audience a solid user experience by making you’re pages display properly. Font styles can be a great place to start. Provide users with a simple and obvious way to increase the size of your font to make reading content easier for them.

Upgrading your site shouldn’t be expensive or a daunting prospect for you. No matter the cost of updating the site, NOT upgrading and failing to show what your customers expect to see is likely to cost far more in lost sales.

Contact us today at  214-432-1608 or complete our free online quote form.

Mobile Web Design makes a fit your website on Mobile Devices

Is your website ready for the Mobile Revolution?

Mobile Web Design….The latest and Most Advanced Technology

When was the last time you looked at your website from your smart phone? You might be surprised to learn that the layout, the graphics and the design are not showing up correctly because desktop websites were not created to be seen on a mobile device. Websites that have not been designed with a smart phone in mind, are usually not compatible with a mobile device and will in all likelihood appear smaller than you anticipated, contain much larger images and be hard to read.

 

Make Your Website Accessible Via Your Smart Phone with Responsive Web Design

What you may ask is the difference between having a desktop website and a mobile website?

The answer is simple. When a visitor tries to access your website on their smart phone, it has to be user-friendly with the mobile device or it’s going to look distorted. If the design is not optimized and laid out correctly, the viewer may see the wrong content or worse they may view what appears to be a disorganized arrangement of words and design, which of course can’t be good for business.

Google wants websites to work correctly on ALL devices and they recommend that the sites be “responsive” designed websites.  Responsive web design is a technique to build web pages that alter how they look using CSS3 media queries. That is, there is one HTML code for the page regardless of the device accessing it, but its presentation changes using CSS media queries to specify which CSS rules apply for the browser displaying the page. This is Google’s recommended configuration.

An Optimized Mobile Web Design

With the number of smart phones in existence and growing daily, millions of people could potentially gain access to your website with their mobile device, but what will they see? If you don’t have a website that is compatible with a mobile device, you could be losing a great deal of business.
The advantages of a mobile web design are many and include the following:

• Generates new business
• Enables easy navigation
• Improves the user experience
• Is interactive and easy to access
• Makes surfing more fun and much easier
• Improves SEO performance
• Rankings rise on mobile-friendly search engines
• Increases business visibility

If your mobile website is optimized, it means that it’s been designed to fit precisely on the smaller mobile device screen. That way, everything is displayed correctly and in turn, navigating is easy and efficient.

To learn more about our mobile web design, contact us at 214-432-1608 or toll free at 888-636-1344. Or if you prefer, you can complete our Free Online Request Form and someone will be in touch promptly.

6 Reasons Why You Need an Updated Website To Make Sales

The internet has come a long way in the past two decades. Recently, we’ve seen a surge in quality among many small or local business websites. A quality site empowers small to medium sized businesses to take on the bigger players. At the same time, several websites have become out dated and have lost their attractiveness and/or functionality because of their reluctance to follow the most recent trends. We understand the reluctance when you don’t have access to someone you can trust to properly update and maintain your site.
Your online customers can easily make out if your website looks outdated or doesn’t offer a satisfactory experience. A good way to test your web site to make sure it is up-to-date is see how it displays on your smart phone. Do you like the way your business looks on your phone? If you’re your answer in no, you can be sure your customers won’t like it either!

Website Not Optimized

In today’s connected world, the majority of people access websites with their smart phones. If a web site is slow loading or seems disproportionate on a smartphone, it means it has not been optimized for mobile phones. This can cost you customers.

Unclear Message

If the site is not displaying properly on a mobile device, your online visitors will only be on your site for a brief while. So, it’s vital that you make sure you get the message about your products and services across quickly in the most effective way. If you are not able to provide the information quickly and obviously, visitors will simply click away to another website. To avoid losing visitors make sure the main page contains all the essential navigation and functionality and the message is in plain and easy terms. If you feel your website is appropriately designed, you may still ask for a second opinion from close friends who will be more honest in their review of your website. Also, have it tested on multiple devices as well as browsers.

Difficult to Navigate

The website should be simple to navigate. The visitors must not ever get ‘stuck’ in some part of the web site and find it difficult to go back. The navigation bar is typically towards the top of the web site. It should offer the user easy navigation.
If your web site is well navigable, customers will spend more time on it, and this increases their visit duration, which can result in increased business conversions or product purchases.

Doesn’t Look Fashionable

It will be obvious to your visitors if your web site is outdated. To remain competitive in the online market, your site should look current and have updated information. It’s best to seek the unbiased opinion of your friends. This can offer you some valuable insight into what should be done to make it more appealing.

Poor Conversion Rate

When a potential client visits your web site, you are likely hoping they engage in some kind of activity such as responding to a Call-to-Action (CTA), submit a query form, sign up for a newsletter, purchase a product or perform some sales related action. If you’re obtaining less response and your conversion rate is on the decline, then there’s cause for concern. It implies that your web site isn’t providing the client what they are  wanting to find or it just doesn’t have the attractiveness of your competitor’s sites. Once you’re aware that something is wrong and it’s have a negative impact on your conversion rates, it’s time to seriously consider a website redesign.

Lots of Bling

Make sure that the site doesn’t have too many bells and whistles. Too many graphics, pop ups or scripts don’t impress your visitors, it just slows down your web site and drives visitors away.
It’s much better to have a simple but optimized website. It loads faster and conveys the message to the web visitors without any further hiccups.
For a free professional website design evaluation contact us today:  214-432-1608

Affordable Website Design in Dallas

At Red Spot Design…Your Online Success is Our Only Goal!

Red Spot Design is comprised of a design team of web-based experts headquartered in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Based on our years of experience supporting clients around the globe coupled with our outstanding reputation, we know which areas to focus on and which web design aspects need the greatest attention. If you are looking for an affordable custom designed website in the Dallas and Fort Worth (DFW) Metroplex or if you’re in the market for a company that cares about your business, you won’t have to look further than Red Spot Design, as we know what it takes to succeed on the Internet.

Share Your Products & Services With Confidence

Whether you simply want to establish a basic online Internet presence or if your need is for a dynamic database driven web site, it makes no difference to Red Spot Design, as we will provide the same level of care and attention to both. If you are a business that is just starting out or one with greater interests, if you want to share your products or services to an online market, Red Spot Design will put you on the map. We are fully aware that you want to grow your business and we also know that to be found on the web, your site must be properly optimized. In other words, your online presence must rank high in major search engines in order to meet SEO criterion. We at Red Spot Design know precisely how to optimize a website so that it includes the right structure, layout, keywords, navigation and a properly submitted process.

Red Spot Design Provides Online Marketing Solutions

Red Spot Design offers exceptional web design services to both the local Dallas/Fort Worth community as well as serving clients worldwide. Every client, whether a small mom and pop business or a medium sized corporation, can count on our providing the most effective online marketing solutions that help drive revenue up and turn visitors into customers. Staying abreast of the latest technologies, Red Spot Design offers cutting edge online expertise, making sure that your business is dynamically showcased.

Our Primary Goal is Helping You Succeed

Headquartered in Dallas/Fort Worth Texas, Red Spot Design offers affordable website design in Dallas, Plano, Frisco or all other cities across the DFW area.  At Red Spot Design, we listen to your needs before we even start on a project and then we follow up by producing a web design that communicates effectively with your target audience.
Contact us today at 214-432-1608 or toll free at 888-636-1344 to learn how Red Spot Design can help with your website design, web hosting, or search engine optimization (SEO) needs or complete our Free Online Request Form.