Hello, I am a Graphic Designer based in Des Moines, Iowa. I specialize in Web Site Design and Development. I build clean, appealing, and functional interfaces that comply with the latest web standards and web accessibility guidelines. I would be glad to help you with your next web project, just click on "Get a Quote"
Building a successful web site takes more than a little perspiration, but with a little time and effort your site can be working for you in ways you never thought possible. The following are often overlooked, but essential elements to creating a successful web site.
1.Today, potential customers are more likely than ever before to get their first impression of your company from your web site. The image your company projects and the ease in which users can navigate your site and find the information they are looking for can determine whether or not a visitor becomes a customer. The key to making a great first impression is high quality web design.
High quality web design starts with a clean, well organized user interface. Content should be well organized into different sections that are accessible through the site's main navigation. Sub navigation should be used whenever necessary to access content within sub groups. Your interface should have an attractive design that reflects your content and will engage your user base.
Your site's code should also be semantically structured and conform to the latest web standards and accessibility guidelines. Pages should be coded in xhtml and use external cascading style sheets to control the layout and look of your site. Javascript and other dynamic code should be externalized when ever possible. This helps to maintain the pages structural integrity and helps search engines index your content.
2. By far the most effective way to improve the traffic to your site is to optimize your site to be search engine friendly. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the science of improving both quantity and quality of the traffic to a web site. This is done by following many different techniques across the web site, including the writing or re-writing of content, proper coding of pages, and structurally organizing and naming the elements of your page. search engine optimization takes a given list of keyword phrases and optimizes the sites content so that pages from the site will be more likely to be found when a user searches for those keyword phrases.
Search engine optimization or SEO is what makes the difference between a great looking site and a great looking site that can be found when visitors search for specific keyword phrases. Without search engine optimization you need to drive traffic to your site using other methods such as advertising, word of mouth, pay-per-click campaigns, or direct mail. These methods are almost always more time consuming, considerably more costly and less effective. The bottom line is search engine optimization is the most effective way to get people to your site.
3. Did I mention content? Your site’s text content is what search engines dig through when indexing your site. Text content that is rich in targeted keywords and keyword phrases helps your site rank higher in search engine result pages or (SERPS). It is extremely important to have selected the keywords and keyword phrase you are going to target prior to writing the content for your site. There are many tools available to help you research keywords to use. A couple of my favorites are Self SEO and Google's Keyword Tool.
Search engines respond best to pages that target one or two keywords or phases. This means that if you have several keywords or phrases be sure to create a page dedicated to each. You should be sure to include several instances of your keyword in the opening paragraph of each page. Search engines typically give more "weight" to the first paragraph on any given page. As you write the rest of the content for the page you should repeat your targeted keywords in several different ways through out the page. This will reassure search engine spiders that the rest of the page pertains to the same keywords defined in the opening paragraph. Be careful not to over do it, always remember you are writing for humans first, search engines second. The key is to find a happy medium.
4. Once you have your content finalized and your site has been launched, it is a common mistake to think that the work is done. In reality a website is much like a pet, if you don't feed it, it will die. Updating your site regularly not only helps with search engine visibility but it also gives your visitors a reason to come back and see what is new. Decide on an update schedule, what ever makes to most sense for your site. It could be daily, weekly, or monthly the point is find a time frame that works and stick to it.
Frequently updating your site can get expensive if you have to pay a web site designer each time you want to add a page. If you are serious about maintaining your site, the best solution is a content management system. A content management system allows anyone in you company or organization to log on with a user name and password to a "back-end" section of your site and add pages, edit content and even remove pages without having any web site design knowledge. If you have ever used ebay, craigslist, facebook or posted anything on a blog, you have used a content management system. Popular content management system include; joomla, expression engine, wordpress and drupal.
