Is Your Site in Need of a Re-Design?
When you’ve got a web site and you realize something is not quite right, maybe because it has a excessive bounce rate or perhaps fails to convert, it might be a time for a redesign by a boutique web design firm. Below are some common web site design mistakes that we see over and over again:
1) Your splash page doesn’t pop. Your splash page needs to have a unique message and call to action and needs to mesh with your intended audience. Discovering the right mix of wording and images along with a unique message to harness the theme associated with your site is usually an even more challenging job than expected. An experienced designer can either create this page for you or give you tips and feedback on how to setup your own page.
2) Your web site is not actually working within several browsers. Numerous web site owners are amazed to get comments from site visitors that inform them their site is not functioning correctly in a major browser, such as Mozilla Firefox. Not testing one’s web site in all the major browsers is a definite mistake. When hiring a boutique website design company make sure to specify that they test for cross browser compatibly, including Firefox, IE, Google Chrome and Safari.
3) Your choice of colors is outdated or not working for the intended audience. Website color choice should carefully mirror your visitors. Moms shopping for their boys might be turned off by too much pink, so a boutique that caters to boys and girls needs to be careful to reach out to both. Likewise, a site selling both men’s and women’s items probably wants to stay away from a pastel color palette. If you are only selling girls or baby things, then a high quality girly website design is perfect, but if you have a mix or even a boys only boutique, then you need something a bit edgier and neutral. A good WAHM web design team can help you explore the perfect color combinations.
4) Your web site’s navigation is hard to understand. The number one problem users have is that they can’t find the checkout and they don’t know where to look if they have a question. Your checkout button and a questions or FAQ link should be in a prominent spot on most pages of your site, and certainly on any shopping pages.
5) Your site either has no call to action, such as a newsletter signup form, or it is in a bad spot, where most visitors will never see it. It’s essential to place the call to action in the forefront, and also on virtually every web page. If you’d like site visitors to be able to contact you on the telephone, place your telephone number within your header so that it appears on all pages. If you want users to sign up for your newsletter add it to the top of your sidebar.
If you are building a brand new web site or updating an existing one, you should be prepared for a number of costs for boutique website design. Pricing is often dependent on the scale and difficulty of the web site, the website designer or firm, as well as the caliber of the completed project. Look for a designer who can provide you with a firm fee structure and provide a pricing estimate or quote ahead of time. Make sure to ask questions about revisions and who is responsible for loading content. Get everything in writing and make sure to request a signed agreement letter spelling out the details.
Take into consideration the size of the firm and how long they have been in business. Pricing among designers can fluctuate widely based on experience and background. Often a boutique website design studio can give you better pricing over a bigger shop, because their overhead is often lower because they don’t have as many expenses associated with marketing and advertising, administrative, sales, etc. This doesn’t mean that the boutique firm will deliver a lower quality product, but make sure to fully explore their design portfolio and ask questions up front.
Your web designer should be able to assist you in choosing a web hosting solution that fits your needs and budget. Remember, in terms of free web hosting, or even dirt cheap hosting, you get what you pay for. But, you should be able to get reliable service for $100 – $150 per year, depending on whether an ecommerce cart is included in the pricing. Larger sites, or sites requiring high bandwidth may have to spend more. Finding a solution that includes a content management system (CMS) will make your website easy to maintain and allow you to make edits as needed, without having to rely on paying costly fees for small changes. There are specialized solutions that are on the pricier side, and these may be a good fit for you if you have specialized requirements.
Your domain name registration is a smaller expense and should always be handled by the client. Time and time again, a business owner is left having to switch their domain name because their designer will not release the rights to it after the relationship sours. Take care of your own registration or make sure that your designer is registering the domain in your name only, and you will avoid costly headaches later.
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