Web Design Do's And Don'ts

These tips will save you weeks of heatache and frustration.

Tip #1: Spend several days researching your competition and developing your search engine strategy

Before you even start putting together designs for your website, you need to make a list of your top competitors. Start by thinking of the search words that your target audience (prospects, potential clients, etc.) will type into search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Write down the companies and the websites that pop up at the top of the list. Even if they're not a competitor, you'll want to write it down because there's a linking strategy you'll want to employ once you're up and running. This linking strategy will help you launch to the top of the search engines and stay there.

Tip #2: Create Your Website to Be Adaptable

There's an article on this website that talks about the importance of having a website that's easy to update, maintain, or completely overhaul.

One of our recent creations, Travel Nurse Depot, is over 6,200 pages... yet we can totally alter the layout of the entire site in under 5 minutes!

We can test different strategies to rank higher in the search engines. We can add text that appears on every single page of the website. We built it right the first time.

The important thing to understand is that your Web Design needs to take into account the fact that you'll be adding more pages, links, and content as time goes on. You might even decide that you're tired of the layout of the site and you want to change the whole thing.

Even if you never create a 6,000 page website, you need to be able to quickly and easily update your website.

To do this, we use a kind of dynamic "template" and splice the computer code into the regular HTML (Web Design code). By changing just two or three files... we can effectively update the entire site in no time flat!

Tip #3: Understand How to Win the Search Engine Wars

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of companies looking to make a fast buck by telling good folks like you that you can pay them a small fee and they'll get your website ranked high in the search engines automatically.

Don't believe it. See our article on search engine optimization strategies.

Nine out of 10 tricks either don't work anymore or will get you kicked out of the search engine listings altogether.

The best way to get a high ranking on the search engines is to use intelligent Web Design that creates a website specifically designed to rank well... and still looks professional... and generates leads and sales for you.

Balancing appearance, marketing, and search engine tactics is a critical component of our Web Design process.

Tip #4: Compell Anyone Visiting Your Website to DO SOMETHING

It's hard enough getting a steady stream of visitors to your website, make sure that they either place an order or give you their contact information before they leave.

I'm not talking about pop-ups. These have been overused and they're annoying.

You need to have answers to these two questions before you begin creating your website:

What do I want my prospect to do? (Place an order, sign up to my email list, etc.)
What am I going to offer in order to compell them to take this step? (Discount, premium, information, cross-promotion, etc.)

Whether it's sales leads you're after or whether you want to close the deal on the first visit... you need to have an objective clear in your mind and you then have to use intelligent website design to accomplish your goal.

One of the reasons that SureFire Web Design is able to deliver such solid results for our clients is that we have experience in sales and marketing from other industries. Most Web Design firms only know how to create pretty websites.

We go beyond pretty websites and design online marketing strategies that deliver results.

Get the Entire List of Web Design Tips Sent to Your Email

We've purposely held out the best tips for last.

We'll send you the other tips at no cost and no obligation just for joining our mailing list.

Here's a sample of some of the things you'll learn...

How to automatically send out a pre-scheduled sequence of newsletters / sales letters to your hottest prospects
A listing of our favorite online tools that we use to diagnose problems with websites. Some of these tools are for search engine strategies, and others help improve usability (for example: this great link checker)
A neat little trick we used to quickly create 6,000 pages of search engine "food" that helped a client get top billing in the engines

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Let Us Review Your Current Website for Free

SureFire Web Design will look at your current design and draw up a comprehensive blue print that you can use to build the website you've always wanted.

If you don't currently have a website then we'll investigate your competition and give you an action plan for your online marketing efforts.

If you'd like more details on our Free Analysis then contact us at 904-513-9222.

There's no obligation to use our services.