There are many different platforms to choose from when putting together your website design. Web design languages or platforms include ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, Java, Flash and HTML. There are also other forms of website design such as Cold fusion web design and SHTML website design. An individual or a company has to consider what type of web hosting they want for their website design. Do they want the website hosted on a standard server or on a secure server (HTTPS)? They should also take into concern whether or not to implement search engine promotion into the website design for effective SEO.

Differences between each type of web design

HTML website design

A website design in HTML is probably one of the more recommended forms of website design whilst advertising online. This is merely because search engine crawlers such as the Googlebot can read the content of the website a lot easier. An HTML website design goes hand in hand with our search engine promotion techniques, even though search engine friendly dynamic ASP or PHP pages can be created. The only draw-back to a HTML website design is that unless correctly coded, it may prevent search engine spiders from actually viewing the content on the web pages when advertising online.

Dynamic website design and E-Commerce Web design

As a matter of fact, when advertising online dynamic web design such as ASP web design or PHP website design are great when developing a large-scale website. If someone was creating an online store where products are continuously changing, it is recommended to create the website design in either dynamic ASP or PHP for internet marketing. The reason for this is rather than creating one page per product, it would be better to create one template dynamic page with a back-end database for the database website design. That way, there won’t be hundreds of pages but just one page which pulls the information form a database and display as a virtual page across the internet browser.

However, it is also recommended to maximize the search engine optimisation on dynamic web pages by using website design techniques such as mod-rewrite. This website design technique gives the search engine spiders the illusion that there is hundreds of pages as opposed to just one page and this helps the spider from the search engine crawl the site more in depth, thus leading to quicker indexing of the website giving a successful database web design internet marketing experience. The main downfall of dynamic website design is that if not done properly, as with HTML website design, it may put off search engine spiders from viewing the content on the web pages. It is fundamental that some experience with dynamic website design or database web design to properly create an effective search engine friendly e-commerce website for internet marketing solutions.

Optimising shopping carts have become an important part of website design if you want to have your website positioned high in the search results. Ensuring that your products website pages URL strings are correctly named compliments the website optimisation process. The search engine spiders will be able to understand what products you offer and favor your website in the natural listings as opposed to your competition.

One of the main factors in assisting your website to getting to the first pages of Google is website development. To develop your website regularly by adding new relevant content that is unique about new products or services is great for the search engine spiders as it keeps them coming back to index your website and keep up to date with your products and services. Website development is the process that continues once your website design has been completed and uploaded. When you access new web pages to your website there are techniques and website structure techniques that can be used to ensure your site is strongly equipped with the tools to compete in the top listings on the major search engines.

• HTML web design
• ASP web design
• PHP Web design Database website design
• Dynamic web design
• E-commerce website designs

Factors that have to take into consideration when trying to setup trading online are:

• Which platform are we going to use; PHP, ASP, HTML, Java or Flash?”
• Which website design company should I use for the web hosting?”
• Most important of all, “How can I get the correct website design?”
• After all the website design is the core to the success of your online marketing and web design also plays a key part in your online identity.

Have you ever sat down and really spent some time surfing throughout your own company website? Are there any broken links? Are you happy with the functionality and the graphical interface? Is it easy to navigate and find the services or products that you are looking for? Well, if you haven’t done this, we strongly suggest that you do. You could be losing tons of customers simply because your website is not up to par with today’s standards and does not appropriately deliver the valuable sales information that potential customers are looking for.

It may give a tricky impression at first, but try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and take a long look at the message that your website delivers to the public. Pretend that you are a potential customer and it’s your first time ever visiting your company website. Let’s start by visiting the home page. Does it contain “sticky” content that is visually and mentally appealing? That is, does it have what it takes to keep today’s savvy consumer clicking through your site. Customers are getting more and more knowledgeable about the Web as time passes by, and their time is extremely valuable.

They are accustomed to getting what they want and when they want it. If they aren’t impressed right from the get-go, they will simply move on to the next company, in search of the product or service that your website could not provide. Your home page is a VERY significant, if not the most important, part of your overall website. Take the time to figure out exactly what your customers are looking for and make it readily available on your home page, or at least have a prominent link to the product or service in plain sight. Try to create headlines that grab the viewer’s attention and make them ask for more.

Next, make sure that your website navigation is clean and user-friendly. If you have buttons that lead the user into a dead-end corner of your site with no way out, then you have major problems to correct. The website user should never have to use the “Back” button in their browser to navigate. If they get lost, they will leave your site.

Your product or service pages should be informative and lead the customer to a course of action. Those pages should steer the customer into purchasing online, calling you directly or requesting more information or a custom quote. Make sure that your phone number, preferably a 1-800 number, is visible on every page of the website, therefore lowering the path of resistance to making a sale. Also, be sure that the rest of your contact information is easily accessible. That includes your phone number, address and/or a contact form or email address to reach you. We have seen many websites that do not post an address or phone number, leaving the potential client feeling weary about the company’s credibility.

Last but not least, if your webmaster or web design firm lacks the skills to produce a visually appealing site with strategically planned content and functionality, then hire someone that is able to do that. It will pay off in the end!

A site map is a complete catalogue of all sections of a site, with short descriptions of every section. It should be easy to use for making quick searches to find needed information and for moving through your site’s links. It should be a complete map of a website, if such is possible.

Site maps are compulsory for website to obtain a high position in search systems, because search systems highly rate sites which have a site navigation map.

A site map should contain the following

• A short annotation to the site, in which fundamental keywords will be used in text links to main pages of your site standard navigation panel, where all other links to all pages in the site will be located.
• A well-conceived site map should lead to all site nodes. In this way you will get higher priority in when searching the system.

Basic Advice on the Creation of Site Maps

A site map should communicate with the design of the site. Departing from the common conception a site map, as from any other identical document, does not give your site its full measure of attractiveness, and even to the contrary can unnecessarily frighten away users.

The use of graphics elements during the creation of a site map is not desirable. Lately most users surf the Web by sites in the Internet in the mode which excludes graphics images. For this reason the presence of graphics as navigation elements in your site map will not be considered very helpful, as they will not function for all users, and the map will be merely a rudimentary representation of your creation. Ideally, therefore, a site map should look the same in all web browsers, for all website visitors.

The map’s structure should associate to the hierarchy of the site itself. For the structure of a site map it is desirable to use headers and lists. The use of tables makes this process much more difficult.

It is desirable to place the link to your site map on the main or first page of your website and to make it in such a way that the user could, if necessary, quite easily use it. The user should not stop for one second to think about what he should do, when he doesn’t know what to do further after landing on your website.

A higher search ranking is what many website owners dream of. What they don’t realize is that by optimizing their site for the search engines, if done correctly, they can also optimize it for their site visitors. Therefore, this means more people finding your website and increased sales and lead generation. But are search engine optimization and usability compatible? Aren’t there trades-offs that need to be made between giving search engines what they want and giving people what they want?

Keyword research carried out Before you even begin building your website, you should carry out keyword research to identify which keyword phrases your site should target. Using publicly available tools such as Word tracker, you can discover which keywords are searched for the most recurrently and then specifically target those phrases. Doing keyword research is also critical for your site’s usability. By using the same keywords in your website that web users are searching for in search engines, you’ll literally be speaking the same language as your site visitors.

For example, you might decide to target the phrase, “web design”, as your website does in fact do website design. Keyword research would certainly show you that web users are actually searching for, “web design” (think about it - have you ever searched using the word, “WEB DEVELOPMENT”, when you want to look for web designing companies?). By placing the phrase, “web design” onto the pages on your website, you’ll be using the same words as your site visitors and they’ll be able to find what they’re looking for more easily.

200 word minimum per page Quite simply, search engines love content - the more content there is on a page the easier it is for search engines to work out what the page is actually about. Search engines may struggle to work out the point of a web page with less than 200 words, ultimately penalizing that page in the search rankings. In terms of usability, it’s also good to avoid pages with very little content. A page with less than 200 words is unlikely to contain a large amount of information, so site visitors will undoubtedly need to click elsewhere to find more detailed information. Don’t be afraid to put a reasonably large amount of information on to a page. Web users generally don’t mind scrolling down anymore, and provided the page provides mechanisms to aid it shouldn’t be too difficult for site visitors to locate the information that they’re after.

100kb maximum HMTL size If 200 words is the minimum page content size, then 100kb is the maximum, at least in terms of HMTL file size. Anything more than this and search engines may give up on the page as it’s simply too big for them. A 100kb HMTL file will take 20 seconds to download on a 56k dial up modem, used by three in four UK web users as of March 2004. Add on the time it takes for all the other parts of the page to download, such as images and JavaScript files, and you’re looking at a highly un-user-friendly download time!

CSS used for layout The website of Juicy Studios saw a six-fold increase in site visitors after switching from a table-based layout to a CSS layout. Search prefers CSS-based sites and is likely to score them higher in the search rankings because: The code is cleaner and therefore more accessible to search engines, important content can be placed at the top of the HTML document and there is a greater density of content compared to coding. Using CSS for layout is also highly advantageous for usability, as it leads to significantly faster download times.

Meaningful page title If you know anything about search engine optimization you’ll know that search engines place more importance on the page title than any other attribute on the page. If the title adequately describes the content of that page then search engines will be able to more accurately guess what that page is about. A meaningful page title also helps site visitors’ work out where they are, both within the site and the web as a whole. The page title is the first thing that loads up, often quite a few seconds before the content, so a descriptive, keyword-rich page title can be a real aid to help users orientate themselves.

Headings and sub-headings used Search engines assume that the text contained in heading tags is more important than the rest of the document text, as headings summaries the content immediately below them. Headings are also incredibly useful for your human site visitors, as they greatly aid scanning. Generally speaking, we don’t read on the web, we scan, looking for the information that we’re after. By breaking up page sections with sub-headings that effectively describe the content beneath them, scanning becomes significantly easier. Do be sure not to abuse heading tags though. The more text you have contained in heading tags within the page, the less importance search engines assign to them.

Opening paragraph describes page content That search engines love content has already been established, but they especially love the first 25 words or soon each page. By providing an opening paragraph that adequately describes the content of the rest of the page, you should be able to include your important keyword phrases in this crucial area. As web users, whenever we arrive at a web page the first thing we need to know is whether this page has the information that we’re after. A great way to find this out is to scan through the first paragraph, which, if it adequately describes the page content, should help us out.

Descriptive link text Search engines place a lot of importance on link text. They assume that link text will be descriptive of its destination and as such examine link text for all links pointing to any page. If all the links pointing to a page about widgets say ‘click here’, search engines can’t gain any information about that page without visiting it. If on the other hand, all the links say, ‘widgets’ then search engines can easily guess what that page is about. One of the best examples of this in action is for the search term, ‘miserable failure’. So many people have linked to George Bush’s bio using this phrase as the link text, that now when miserable failure is searched for in Google, George Bush’s bio appears top of the search rankings!

As web users, we don’t generally read web pages word-for-word. We scan them looking for the information that we’re after. When you scan through text you can’t take any meaning from the word ‘click here’. Link text that effectively describes its destination is far easier to scan and you can understand the destination of the link without having to read its surrounding words.

Frames avoided Frames are quite an old-school technique, and although aren’t as commonplace as they once were, do still rear up their ugly head from time to time. Using frames is one of the worst possible things you could do for your search engine ranking, as most search engines can’t follow links between frames. Even if a search engine does index your pages and web users find you through a search engine, they’ll be taken to one of the pages within the frame. This page will probably be a content page with no navigation and therefore no way to navigate to any other page on the site! Frames are also disadvantageous for usability as they can cause problems with the back button, printing, history and bookmarking. Put simply, say no to frames!

Quality content provided This may seem like a strange characteristic of a search engine optimized website, but it’s actually crucial. Search engines, in addition to looking at page content, look at the number of links pointing in to web pages. The more inbound links a website has, all other things being equal, the higher in the search rankings it will appear. By providing creative, unique and regularly updated content on your website, webmasters will want to link to you as doing so will add value to their site visitors. You will also be adding value to your site visitors. Eventually, optimizing your website for both search engines and people needn’t be a trade-off. With this much overlap between the two areas, you should simply be able to have a website that web users can find in the search engines, and when they do find it, they can find what they’re looking for quickly and professionally.