The first thing you need to ask yourself is “why your website needs to be redesigned”? Is it to generate more leads, higher search engine rankings or a better modern look and feel? Secondly you need to think of what needs to be redesigned. For example, maybe the content on your website is outdated or some element needs to be replaced such as the coding of your website. Invest time to go through your website to identify which elements are working and which ones are not.

It is very important to analyse and keep in mind how users are currently interacting with your site as well as the latest market trends. This will also enable you to identify great content and problem areas. If you implement Google Analytics, you can have access to statistics such as how many visitors your website gets sales conversions and search engine keywords mostly used for your products/services. You can also have a look at your screen resolution and browser usage; make sure your website loads quickly and correctly on all browsers.

In Today’s fast paced, ever changing world, companies change their Corporate Identity (CI) to tap into the right market, just remember that if you change your company’s corporate identity then ensure the changes are reflected on your website too, as your website is the face of your company. User make a decision about your company based on your website, so make sure it’s incredible enough to make a lasting impression.

Happy designing!

Usability refers to the ease of use and learnability with which a human interacts with an object. Usability in the context of Information Technology generally falls within the academic field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).. In the field of web design, usability and interaction design is just as important as the visual design itself. Your website can be aesthetically beautiful, but if users find it difficult to interact with, you have a big problem.

There are a number of components that tie in with usability and I shall briefly discuss a few of them here. Interaction with any device should be a designed process. The interface for interaction should be easy to use and user friendly. An interface should also be designed to be intuitive. Users should be able to know what to do automatically, without having to think about it. The user should therefore not feel frustrated.

If new actions have to be learnt, these should be easy to remember. This brings us to another point, learnability. A highly learnable interface is one in which users automatically know what to do after they have performed the required actions a few times.

Ultimately, the user should be considered during every single phase of design and implementation. The target audience, user cognition, and affective aspects play an extremely important role. The affective aspects involved when a user interacts with any type of interface includes the user’s emotional reactions, biases and other psychological traits.

A couple of ways in which to improve the usability of your site (or device, software or anything else you can think of that humans will interact with) are the following:

- Follow standards and conventions. These conventions are in some cases quite obvious (don’t put light text on a light background or make sure buttons look like buttons), however there are certain conventions that have just sort of evolved over time. They are “tried and tested” ways of doing this and are there for a reason. The point is that these standards are known by users and users will look for them.  It might be tempting to explore radically new ideas, but if you are not sure your idea will work, it might be better not to implement it.

- Conduct Usability tests. If you want your website to be usable, learnable and user friendly it is crucial that you conduct usability tests. These tests can be done with a small amount of people and with limited equipment. The important thing is that you do this continuously at various stages of development ( and pre development). Get a couple of people to use your website and monitor them, record their screen actions and listen to their feedback. You will most certainly pick up errors. And because you are conducting usability tests early on in the process, you will have time for improvement.

- Analyse the data. Analyse and interpret the data obtained from the usability test. See where improvement is necessary and share the results with your staff.

The field of HCI is quite large and it would benefit any individual who is involved with the design, implementation and planning of any interface to read a book or two on the subject. I can recommend Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, this is an excellent book which covers almost everything you need to know. If you want to save a bit of time though, pick up the book ‘Don’t make me think’ by Steve Krug.

If you are looking for a quick efficient solution to get a website up and running – Wordpress is most definitely the way to go. Wordpress is an Open Source website publishing software that was first released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg. In this article I’ll discuss in short what type of hosting you will need to host a Wordpress website, how to download it and upload it to a domain, how to change the look by downloading a free theme and how to install it, how to implement some cool functionality (plugins) and how to use the basic Wordpress features.

Hosting your WordPress website

First of all – you need to find a company to host your Wordpress website on a server. Wordpress requires PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor) and MySQL (a relational database management system) to work. You’ll also need to choose a domain name e.g. www.example-site.com. The hosting company should be able to register a domain name (the one you chose and if it is available) on your behalf. Ask them to send you the MySQL and FTP login information because you’ll need it to set up a working Wordpress website.

Interexcel Hosting

Downloading Wordpress & Uploading it to your website

After you have organised hosting (that will be able to run Wordpress) and got a domain name you will need to download Wordpress CMS. Download Wordpress.

You will also need to download an FTP client such as FileZilla to be able to connect to the server with the above mentioned FTP details. After downloading the FTP client open it enter the Host name (or IP address), username and password (FTP details) and then click QuickConnect (in FileZilla). Then you should be connected to the server. If you struggle with this, phone your hosting company they will be able to help you with this. Download FileZilla

Unzip the Wordpress zip file on your local machine then upload the contents of it to the www folder (usually www or public_html).

Installing Wordpress

If you have uploaded the Wordpress files – go to your domain name e.g. http://www.example-site.com where an installation wizard will be prompted. Fill in all the information you need to e.g. database connectivity login information (usually given by the hosting company) and website name. Continue until you have completed the setup wizard. You can edit the database variables in the configuration file found in the root of your Wordpress installation.

Now that your Wordpress website has been successfully installed you can go to the administrator panel by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin where you can then login with the information you supplied in the setup wizard.

Downloading a Theme and installing it

Now with your website hopefully successfully running, it’s time to customize it a bit with templates / themes.

There are plenty of themes out there you can use. To download themes go to the Wordpress website: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ where you can search for themes (many of which are customizable in your administration panel) and download it.

You can also search for themes within the WordPress administration by clicking on Add new themes link on the left hand side (a sub menu of the Appearance link).

If you downloaded it to your local upload it to your wp-content/themes/ folder and if you search for it via the administration it can be automatically installed. Just make sure your themes folder is set to writable (chmod 777). Then go to your administration and enable your new theme.

Extend WordPress even more

Now with your website looking great you can extend the functionality of it. It is easy to extend Wordpress with existing plugins. You can search plugins again from your administration by clicking on the plugins tab on your left hand side and then click on the sub menu “Add new” where you can search for plugins which is installable similar to that of the themes. (Again make sure your plugins folder is writeable (chmod 777)

Basic Use of a Wordpress website

Creating a new post entry

Click on the Posts tab (found on your left hand side) then you will see sub items underneath the Posts tab then click on “Add new “. Fill in the title of your entry, the body, the category the post should appear in and other fields. You can then click on Preview to view the page (before publishing) or just click Publish to make it live.

Creating a category

One uses categories to organise your postings. To create a category you can either create a new post then where you choose a category click on “Add new category” or you can go to the categories section (under Posts tab) and there you will find a create new category form. Fill in fields and click on “Add Category”.

It is virtually impossible to explain all of Wordpress within one blog entry but I am sure this article will help you to set up a basic website in a very short period of time. Wordpress is by far the best most affordable solution to set up a well functioning website.

This usually leaves a business with a website that looks unprofessional that cannot be found organically via search engines because the website has not been constructed correctly. A website needs to be constructed in such a manner that robots (web bots) can make sense of it so that it can be indexed and finally be found by potential clients.

Visitors to your website want a great user experience. A professionally designed website that is relevant to your product/service improves user experience. Images used in designs should be optimized for websites to improve loading speed. Nothing increases the bounce rate of websites as much as long page loading times.

User experience is improved by implementing functionality like search, quote forms, booking systems to mention just a few. Visitors don’t like to struggle using websites they want to find what they need as easily and quickly as possible.

Maintenance on a website should also be done regularly and if not done correctly it can easily break your website. Building your website in to a CMS (Content Management System) can help with this especially in decreasing the time spent on updating your website.

One should use a professional to construct and maintain a website as Aa professionals has the ability to construct a website according to W3 standards using the latest proven technologies to optimize websites for search engines and to improved user experience.

This week we will have a look at why you need to get professional help for your website, from the management of the website to all types of online marketing that can be utilised. The online marketing industry is an ever changing environment and if you are running your own company and still need to keep track of all the best practices needed to stay ahead something will get left behind.

Online marketing professionals work with websites and the marketing thereof everyday and trusting a company to handle your website might be worth a lot more than just the extra money that you will spend for their services.

People that I’ve met that ran their own PPC campaigns for example, realized that it was getting too involved for them to manage it properly. After handing it over to us they could focus more on their business and performance of the PPC campaigns also improved. Trying to do SEO yourself might be a bit more tricky because SEO is a lot more technical. You need someone that understands the technical side of how websites and search engines work to do that properly. Managing your social media marketing by yourself might work for a while but you will soon realize that as it grows that it will become time consuming, and you will never get to everything that you have to and do proper management of your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Do check back here the rest of the week for more reasons why you should use an online marketing expert.

Your design

One of the most common mistakes made is in the design of your website. Users can easily be put-off by the lack of good design and development which will result in a high bounce rate. If a design contains too many images the webpage will take a very long time to load and might result in users clicking on the back button of their internet browser to find better results somewhere else. This however doesn’t mean you have to banish images entirely. If you decide to use images they should be web optimized and designed correctly according to internet standards to optimize the loading speed of your web pages.

Forms

In many cases a website’s goal is to get the visitor to submit a form either to register, fill in a contact me request or to submit information for an e-quote. Users don’t like lengthy hard to understand forms as they don’t want to spend too much time on them. Forms should be easy to understand and should not consume too much time to complete.

Call to action

People that visit your website do not want to spend hours looking for information that they want thus your call to action should be clear for users to easily read and understand. Many times users land on a website and they do not know where to go from there to find the information they want. This causes users to leave your website and continue on to find a website that is more organized and easy to understand.

Website copy

Copy according to me is probably the most important factor of your website. It doesn’t only play a role in optimizing your website for search engines but also explains what your website and so your business is all about. Poorly written copy, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors will portray your company as unprofessional or in some cases cause a visitor to immediately leave your website

Finally – I want to stress how important the little things are on your website. Pay attention to detail even if you think it’s not that important because someone else visiting your website might think: “they should have paid attention to that” or “that looks wrong”. Little mistakes are often the reason why visitors to your website do not reach the goals you have set up.

I decided to take a short holiday last weekend and wanted to find an appropriate resort that would allow me to relax and de-stress and God knows we all need that at some point or the other, I had a recommendation regarding a resort from a friend, however when I tried to search for the resort online to have a look at what they offer, and what activities and facilities they have I was sorely disappointed, the resort in question did not have a website, I started getting  frustrated as I couldn’t even find decent images of the place

The only information I could find concerning them was on other accommodation sites and the information I got on there was very limited. All these directory sites where you can list your website can help to get good exposure, but are very limited when it comes to what information you give your potential clients.

By having your own website you can you can give the customer a better feel of what you have to offer, you also don’t have limited space to provide them with the necessary details. Your whole website’s look and feel will add to the experience when people actually visit your resort. The nice thing about having your own website is that it will strengthen your brand a lot. You will never grow a very strong brand by just appearing on these other websites. When users find that you own your own website they tend to trust you more than your competitor which they can’t look up online. This means that you immediately gain an edge above your competitor which is always useful when your selling your services.

If you are in the same situation that Chris was in, in his article being your own travel agent you want to get the right information and as detailed as possible when you need it. If your website is easy to find and informative you will definitely reap the rewards. If someone needs to plan a holiday in a short time and can only use the internet, they will choose the company that gives them the best information in the easiest, quickest way.

Content
Your website should be easily changeable to keep your content fresh – which will in turn give you a higher page rank and inspire your visitors to visit your website again.

The best way to achieve this is by building your website in a CMS (Content Management System). Having a database driven website makes it easy to update information and to implement functionality with extensions e.g. a photo gallery.

By using most content management systems you can display the latest content on the front page automatically this will keep your homepage looking fresh.

Products
If you have a large array of products the best way to publish them is by building your product website in an e-commerce system. An e-commerce system lets you quickly and easily update product information such as prices, descriptions etc. Usually featuring specific products or latest products can be done with a few clicks of the mouse via the administration.

You can also integrate some e-commerce systems with content management systems which will provide a solution for both easily managing content and publishing products.

Look & Feel
Changing the look of your website can easily be done by first developing your website using external style sheets then changing the look by editing the style sheets. When using global style sheets you are able to change the entire website instead of a single page.

Content Management Systems are usually template driven, this allows you to create different looks for your website and choose between them via an administrator panel.

If your website is easy to modify it can save you a lot of time so giving you more time to spend on other aspects of your business.

Often visitors are unwilling to register for a new account on a site they do not know – because they simply don’t trust the website with their personal information such as emails and passwords.

To attract more visitors, make it easy for them to join and participate on your website by integrating Facebook Connect / other similar authentication methods.

For the purpose of this article I will discuss in short Facebook Connect.

Facebook Connect allows users with Facebook accounts to login to third party websites (your website) by simply clicking on a button and filling in their Facebook login information.

Facebook returns a user id of the user that successfully logged-in, which allows you to identify that specific person.

This doesn’t only allow you to display the user’s profile picture, a link to their Facebook profile and allow them to comment on your content but also allows you to update their feed dynamically which is seen by their friends and many more.

Here are a few reasons why Facebook Connect could work for your website:

• Trusted Authentication
  Simplified login – the user has total control over permissions granted.
• Real People
  Facebook users commonly use their real name and real identities.
• Share your information
  With Facebook connect users can share your content/products/services with their Facebook friends. This can generate more traffic to your website.
• Friends
  Visitors that are connected to your website can see which of their friends are also using your website.
• Dynamic Privacy settings
  With Facebook connect a Facebook user brings their privacy settings with them to your site. This builds trust for your website which means users are more likely to return to your site in future.

In conclusion: I expect a lot of websites, especially news and social websites, to implement Facebook connect/similar authentication methods in 2010. Implementing it on your website will give you the edge in 2010 by giving your customers the opportunity to give you feedback and share your product/ service/content with their friends online.