Here is what she had to say about us:

“Jeanette is an amazing web designer who effectively and efficiently created a dream website for me. Initially impressed by a site she had done for another company, I immediately took the opportunity of contacting her for her expertise. I was lucky enough to discover her when she was conducting a contest for a free website design. She went above and beyond what I had expected for a free consult, from providing me free tips for optimal business growth to reasonable costs for further services. She really challenged me to think about what I want in a website and how to reach my goals in its use with her extensive knowledge. I highly recommend her work. It speaks for itself.”

We are planning on running this FREE WordPress website contest again so stay tuned for next time!

1. Objectives

• Do you want to convert your static HTML website to Joomla, WordPress or some other CMS for better content management?
• What challenges do you have with your current website?
• Do you want to sell your products or services online?
• Do you want to redesign your website to match new branding guidelines?

2. Target Market

• How would you describe your target market? What are their income levels, age group, interests and other characteristics that would influence their buying decisions?
• What makes them tick? What motivates them?
• What are their pain points? What do they want to avoid?

3. Company Background

• What products or services does your company provide?
• How long have you been in business?
• What differentiates your product / service from your competition?
• Include samples of your existing marketing collateral like brochures or links to your website

4. Site Specifications

• If you plan to expand content or this is a new website, include a sitemap or list of pages and subpages
• Include samples of other websites that you like and why you like them
• Do you require any other functionalities like connecting your forms to your CRM, email marketing, ecommerce, etc..

5. Budget / Timeline

This is a make or break question because you probably want it ASAP for the cheapest price. However, you get what you pay for – not to be cliche or anything. Sure, you can hire a web developer in India for a few hundred bucks but they won’t be available during your business hours, there will be communication problems and they will only do exactly what you ask and not more. So if you don’t know what to ask for, you might end up with a static HTML website with no content management. Custom WordPress and Joomla websites start around $2,000 if you are hiring someone locally who knows what they are doing. If you are unsure how long things take or what your website budget should be, ask around, shop around and be sure to evaluate portfolios. If you include a reasonable range here, most web designers will try to work with you.

View our wordpress portfolio

I love this video analogy from John Boykin. In this video, John shares with us why it is so important to satisfy the users / consumers first and then consider your clients. This is very challenging to do because as we all know, everyone thinks that they are a expert designer or marketer. I’ve offered my opinions to my clients but its really up to them to take them. However, according to John, I guess I should be fighting them harder. You have to understand what exactly makes your target market tick and their pain points instead of just copying what your competitors are doing or simply creating something that you like. Web designers need to create something that is user-friendly, motivates them and is aesthetically pleasing.

When someone is browsing your mobile website on their smartphone, they are expecting an entirely different experience than if they were on a laptop. Mobile visitors are usually looking for contact information or they are returning visitors who have visited your website already on laptop and are coming back to get information seen previously. Most of them are not interested in casual browsing due to slower page loading times and much smaller screen sizes.

Mobile websites are no longer just something to think about. They are very much here and if your company does not have one, then you are losing out to your competitors. Even with that being said, a recent study revealed that only 61% of Fortune 500 companies have a mobile strategy and initiatives in place. Why is this figure not 100% you ask? I think that this is because large companies have a lot of bureaucracy causing them to be slow adopters. It is ironic because now their success is impeding their growth.

If your website is not mobile-ready then soon you will be left behind. Imagine all the the people who rely solely on their smartphones and tablets because they do not have laptop access – construction workers, teachers, firefighters, police and so on. You are missing out on all that market share.

Currently, in the United States, 20% of cell phone subscribers use smart phones. This means that there is already a mobile internet market of 51 million consumers. Let’s be conservative and say that 80% of the US population has mobile internet access in two years – that is 200 million consumers – an exponential growth of 150 million in two years!

The Quick and Dirty on Making your Website Mobile-Friendly

If you do not have the budget for a full-blown mobile website then at the very least navigate through your website with an iPhone and make sure that everything can be seen correctly even if the user experience is kind of clunky. Most of your problems involve Javascript and Flash which can be easily replaced with static substitute graphics by any web developer.

Here are some characteristics of great mobile websites:

• No Flash, Javascript or pop-ups
• Very simplified pared-down version of your actual website
• Incorporate branding elements from your actual website
• Leave some breathing room or white space
• Automatically detect the mobile device and redirect mobile users
• Allow people to switch to view your full website
• Reduce number of form fields

Remember that going mobile doesn’t mean just installing and activating a generic mobile WordPress or Joomla plugin. These plugins do not incorporate your branding and sometimes render things in unexpected ways causing overlapping items and other issues.

Mobilize my website!

Custom Web Design Considerations

• Ensures your website is not simply a replica of another website already out there and that it has a distinct identity
• Coded with SEO in mind
• Gives your company more credibility because you are willing to invest in custom web development
• Custom-made to meet your company’s needs and branding
• Sometimes customizing a pre-made theme or template too much can cost just as much as custom web design!
• Get the choice of various design mockups custom made for your target market

Customizing Pre-made Themes and Templates Considerations

• Cheap if you do not want to customize very much
• Considerably shorter web development time
• There could have been people who downloaded it before you even if you buyout the theme or template
• Likely has a lot more features and javascript that you do not need causing less optimized coding
• Most do not have matching mobile / iPad versions

Whatever you decide, both choices have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Start Your website project

Jeanette Kwok Web Design is giving away a free three-page WordPress website to one lucky winner! The winner will receive one mockup with two sets of revisions and the custom WordPress theme populated with three pages with two sets of revisions. Search engine optimization, animation, extra pages, forms and WordPress training for website updates are available for an additional fee.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is known for being a blog tool but many companies use it because of its user-friendly content management system. You can install pre-made or custom themes completely changing the look and feel of your website. WordPress has built-in internal search, the ability to categorize your posts and pages and search-engine friendly urls. Most importantly, it has a huge directory of plugins to extend its functionality way beyond its base installation.

How to Enter

1. You must be a fan of our Facebook page. To do this, click “like” at the top of Jeanette Kwok Web Design page on Facebook.
2. Click “like” at the bottom of this blog post to post this contest on your wall and encourage your friends to enter as well. You will be given extra consideration if you tweet this post =)
3. Come back to this blog post and leave a comment saying that you are a fan and have posted it on your wall. If you need extra pages or any additional web design services, be sure to include this in your comment. This is where I will pick a random winner.

Contest Rules

1. The winner must use up their free website or web maintenance hours by March 31, 2012.
2. The prize is non-transferrable.
3. One entry allowed per company.
4. No purchase necessary.

 
All entrants will receive a free evaluation of their current website or a consultation for a new one. The winner will be chosen randomly and announced Friday, December 16, 2011 just in time to get a fresh new website for the new year! Good luck!
 
Visit us on Facebook

Social media is a group of internet-based applications that allow the creation and exchange of content generated by users. Although social media websites like Friendster followed by MySpace were around since the early 2000s, it really didn’t become popular until the emergence of Facebook and iPhone which revolutionized real-time status updates on what is hot and happening right now with their location-based apps. Social media has become increasingly popular with the internet being more accessible. It allows you to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate online at a fraction of the cost of print marketing. If you are not using social media, then your competitors are. Many small businesses still do not understand social media marketing and how they can benefit from it which is why I am going to discuss how to leverage it to increase your website’s visibility.

Social Media Marketing Tip #1: Blogging

A professional blog shows that you are an expert in your industry. It draws prospects in by educating them about their industry but not necessary about their product or service. In fact, I highly discourage clients from using their blog like an online billboard. If you want to advertise, there’s room for that on the rest of your website. Blogging should be about improving communication between their customers and prospects to foster brand awareness and improved customer service. You should always play devil’s advocate and discuss not only the pros of your issues but the cons as well. When you are first starting off, you will want to drum up traffic or even the appearance of traffic by asking guest bloggers to contribute and family and friends to comment on your posts. Blogging does not mean just diligently writing in your own blog, but also contributing and commenting on blogs that complement your product or service. If someone blogs about something of relevance, link to them and they might just return the favor driving more traffic to your website. You should always promote your blog posts on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with status updates. Finally, submit your posts to article-based websites to increase inbound links to your website.

Social Media Marketing Tip #2: Facebook

With over 750 million active users, Facebook is the largest and stickiest social media website out there. Facebook now allows you to customize your business page with basic javascript and HTML so you can get more likes. It is much easier for Facebook users to check out your business on your Facebook page while logged in than go to your external website. Larger brands like Red Bull and Victoria Secret drive much more traffic to their Facebook pages than their website.

Social Media Marketing Tip #3: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional networking website that allows you to connect with colleagues, business prospects or people within your industry. People use LinkedIn to research companies that they are interested in by reading reviews and testimonials about them. Company pages allow you to reveal information about your staff and highlight how customers use your products or services. In addition, you can join LinkedIn groups and start discussions to intrique your prospects.

Social Media Marketing Tip #4: Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read short text-based posts called “tweets”. You can even incorporate up-to-the-minute tweets keep your website content dynamic and current. This prevents it from getting stale and thus, more effectively grabs the attention of your customers. You can further play up your company’s Twitter presence by adding a “follow” button and the number of current followers. You can also comment on other people’s tweets by adding “@” in front of their username followed by your response which is a great informal way to communicate with your customers. The dissemination of consumer-generated media can bring authenticity, credibility, and a human element to a brand.

Social Media Marketing Tip #5: YouTube

Although YouTube is the best way to make your marketing videos go viral, every minute 35 hours of video is uploaded here which means competition is fierce. First, create content that your target audience needs or wants like a tutorial or demo of your product. Be sure to include your most important keyword search term in your title, be as specific as possible in your description and include all related keywords in your tags field. Brand your YouTube channel by customizing your background and creating a playlist to feature your best content. You can include clickable call-to-actions at the top of your videos. Once you are finished, send out an email to notify your subscribers and announce it on your other social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Social Media Marketing Tip #6: Yelp

If you own a restaurant or any other type of business with a physical location, Yelp is critical to your business. Yelp is one of the largest consumer review websites and Yelp’s business pages are highly favored by Google. Yelp allows you to communicate with your customers, track how many people view your page, create promotions, and add photos and detailed information about your business.

Social Media Marketing Prerequisite: Professional Website Design

Although the majority of traffic from social media is indirect, it still is a good way to promote your company and get free media attention. For example, your Facebook fans and Twitter followers may be interested in what you have to say but may not be ready to buy yet. Social media gives you another touchpoint for you to interact and nurture your leads into a future sale. Of course, all of this social media marketing only works if you can direct them to a stellar website. Most people engaged in social media are more tech savvy so if your website doesn’t load quickly or is not user-friendly, they may get annoyed and never come back. That is why you need to grow your website users first with a well-designed website before you invest in say Facebook advertising. The key takeaway from all this is that social media marketing is only one component to a successful marketing strategy.

Get help with social media marketing

1. Predict What your Prospects Will Google

You should plan each page by putting yourself in the shoes of your target market and imagining what they would search for to stumble on your website. You should pick a topic or keyword search term that is general enough to get you some traffic but specific enough that it narrows your visitors down to prospects who are most likely to buy. After all, you want to generate high quality leads not just any ol’ traffic.

2. Break Up your Content

With so much information overload these days, no one wants to reams and reams of text. I hate to use cliches here, but I really believe in short and sweet and less is more. You should plan every page so that there is minimal scrolling. If longer pages are necessary to get the point across then break up your content with subheadings, bulleted lists, shorter paragraphs and / or fast-loading images. Nothing is more discouraging than a never-ending page of text all clumped into one paragraph.

3. Relevance to your Target Market

Once you have lured in the right visitors, you have to keep them engaged with relevant content. Ask yourself, what are their pain points and motivations that will make them purchase your product or service? In addition, use language that your prospects understand. If your service or product is complex, don’t bombard them with technical jargon unless they know what you are talking about.

4. Don’t Beat Around the Bush

Don’t make your visitors search the underlying meaning. State your case upfront and provide the appropriate supporting data. Don’t ramble on about meaningless stuff.

5. Write About What you Know

It is much easier to win over visitors if you are trying to convince them into something that you know everything about just like I am doing now =) If you do not know enough about what you are selling then get someone who knows what they are talking about to write the web content.

6. Optimal Line Length and Line Height

Although this is more of a website design issue, you should consider it when determining the length of your content to include on each page. Optimum length in the body is 50-60 characters per line including spaces (Typography, E. Ruder). If your lines are too short, your readers won’t get to read to finish your full thought. If your lines are too long, their eyes will wander making it difficult to retain content and concentrate. I also believe in making airy body copy which means that I style it with more line height (space between lines) than usual. Studies show that following these guidelines about line length and line height greatly improve text legibility.

7. Make it Interesting

Unless you are writing about a very serious topic, spice up your web content with some personal experiences, wittiness and humor. No one wants to read just the facts.

8. Link to Relevant Pages Within Your Website

If you are mentioning a topic that is discussed more thoroughly on another page, link to it. One big faux paux is the use and abuse of the term, “click here” especially with underline. It is general knowledge these days that a link will appear in another color or be styled differently so I would just link to the related page with a keyword search term that best describes it. Search engines love this. I cringe when my clients force me to use “click here” or worse yet with underline on their websites. Know that when you see this in my portfolio, it was definitely not my idea.

9. Seal the Deal with a Strong Call-to-Action

If there is one thing I learned from my Marketing work experience, that is the importance of having a call-to-action to conclude every page. After you spent all that time and effort writing, you should boldly state what you want your visitors to do. Typical call-to-action statements including asking your visitors to learn more by going to another page, getting a demo, or buying your product or service. Again, I strongly discourage the use of “click here” as a call-to-action.

10. Double Check Everything

I know this sounds obvious but few people take the time to grammar and spell check everything including myself =) Web content is like an online resume for your company so just like you would get turned down for an interview if you had a spelling error, your company will be discredited, if the web copy doesn’t read right. Everyone has a blog these days so publishing content is as easy as clicking “publish” in WordPress but I caution those who do.

Get help with your web content

For the purposes of this post, I am talking about a custom website designed from scratch using an open-source content management system (CMS) such as Joomla or WordPress which can be downloaded free under the GNU General Public License. However, installing, configuring the extensions and developing the overall look and feel of such a CMS website can prove to be difficult for newbies.

Web Design Prices

A basic website starts at $2,000 which includes:

• W3C compliance to ensure validity of web documents
• Search engine optimization (i.e. Writing meta data, title tags and alt tags and creating a sitemap)
• Two Photoshop mockups created based on your target market, communication objectives and websites that you like
• Custom template / theme design
• Contact form with data validation
• Blog (MyBlog integration if you are using Joomla)
• Cross-browser compatibility (tested in recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari)
• One hour online tutorial on how to use Joomla / WordPress
• Up to ten pages of content

Let me justify this starting cost. Before I even start your project, I have to review your project specs, conduct necessary research (technical challenges, target market and competition) and write a proposal, I have already invested about five hours of my time. I still have to provide you with a couple of options or mockups so you can visualize what I have in mind. You will likely revise your chosen mockup at least a few times to suit your preferences and tastes. For those of you who are interested, I have outlined in detail my website design and development process so you can understand exactly what is involved to get you that kick ass website you want. In addition, there is time for project management (non-design related work) which includes answering your questions, meeting with you and working with you to revise your website to your complete satisfaction. I have heard that some web designers and design agencies charge as much as 50% for account management.

If you want to throw in extra pages, e-commerce, customization of extensions, a mobile website and some graphical complexities your website would run you about $6,000 – $10,000. Most small businesses and start-ups cannot afford this which is why I target larger corporations. I used to webmaster for a global medical devices company who would spend over $20,000 on an 8″x10″ print ad so this barely makes a dent in their marketing budget.

Once your website is launched, I also recommend getting a few hours of monthly web maintenance support to protect your website investment. This will cover any questions you may have and things that inevitably go out of whack so you can preserve your user experience, aesthetics and functionality.

Pros of Outsourcing Web Design

• Experts of the Trade – You will have access to people with very specialized skillsets who you would likely not have on your staff. They have probably done many websites like yours and worked for plenty of companies like yours so this is just easier for them. They know all the tips and tricks of the trade and keep themselves abreast of the latest technologies.
• Cost Savings – It is just cheaper to hire contractors. Even though their rates are higher you are only paying them for hours worked or per project and not full-time. Furthermore, you get away with not paying health insurance, 401K and taxes which amounts to about a 25% cost savings. This is an especially practical option during an economic recession such as the one we are in now.
• Scalability – For a website design / redesign, you will need a huge amount of hours for a short span of time. Once your website is launched, you or your marketing team can maintain it with the content management system (CMS) that powers it.
• Protection Against Employee Turnover – You will not have to worry about your website project stalling if your in-house web designer quits abruptly

Cons of Outsourcing Web Design

• Relinquish Control – Unlike your employees who only work on your projects and are available to you during your time all the time, successful contractors often juggle multiple projects at a time. You will never have total control over your freelance web designer.
• Privacy & Security – Creating a website requires your freelance web designer to access company information. Keeping website design and maintenance allows you to have more control over any sensitive and confidential information. However, a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) could solve this.
• Language Barriers & Time Zone Differences – If you are hiring overseas, they may not be proficient in English and only be available during their time zones thereby making it very difficult to communicate.
• Never Meeting Your Web Designer – If you are not hiring locally, you may never meet your web designer face-to-face. However, having done freelance full-time for many years, I have noticed that less companies are concerned about this. Web cams and Skype help with break down these geographical barriers.

I know that I am kind of biased but I would still recommend outsourcing your web design and maintenance needs because the pros far outweigh the cons if you chose your web designer or design agency wisely.

Learn more about us

]]> http://www.jeanettekwok.com/outsourcing-web-design/feed/ 0