The Importance of Web Design Layout

I thought we might step backward a bit and discuss some important factors in the initial design of your website.  Your web design layout is more important than you might think.

You’ve located a perfect marketing niche for your product or service. You’ve got your business plan and marketing strategies ready to go. You have your domain name and hosting service in place. What you don’t have is your web design layout. While you may plan on hiring a web design firm to make this happen, you’re well advised to put in a little effort of your own before hiring a professional.

No one knows your business better than you do. You know the flavor of the appearance you want to convey to your customers. While a good web page designer may have the visual elements of good graphic design down pat, only you know what will be of special appeal to your niche market base. You also may have the inside scoop on marketing techniques that will edge you up in your search engine rankings. These factors may be totally out of your web design layout expert’s purview. They are looking to create a pretty page that will please a visitor, once they’ve landed on your page. Web page designers are not usually conversant in SEO issues or spider turn-offs. So it’s worth your while to make a mock-up that takes these important issues in to account.

Your page composition is a good starting point. Your home page must be inviting, while fulfilling sales objectives. As soon as your visitor hits your home page, you want them to see your main sales offerings, without having to scroll down. A good web design layout makes these sales points immediately visible, not hidden in the last half of the page. You want them to find your most valuable propositions right off the bat. Make a mock-up of your site’s web design with this in mind. Ad placement is another important component of a good web design layout. Make sure you make it clear what ads you want your visitors to see up front. Your web designer is skilled in visuals and graphic design, but may not understand the importance of ad placement.

Good web design layout must also take into account what type of software will be detrimental to your search engine rankings. Flash(R) slide shows used to be a huge problem. The search engine spiders would essentially flip out when they encountered Flash(R) displays, resulting in no future visits, or indexing, of that page. While the spider bots can now deal with them, after a fashion, there are still a number of details to be taken into consideration before integrating these sophisticated software programs without damaging your rankings.

A good web design layout must also consider different browsers. When you engage a web page designer, make sure they know the problems associated with dealing with different browsers. The majority of web surfers use Internet Explorer. However, Firefox and Opera are competitors. Each of these browsers display your web design layout differently. If your design layout accommodates IE exclusively, you’re going to lose out on that segment of potential customers using a different browser. Your page may appear distorted and unprofessional in appearance, with strange effects that will have that visitor surfing away forever, never to return.

If you make the effort to create a mock-up that incorporates these marketing concerns into your web design layout, you’ll end up with a site that draws the maximum number of visitors. Let your web master take care of the graphic elements, but you should be in charge of the actual web design layout.

To Your Success ….   Debbie

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