Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Effective Website Design and Internet Marketing

If you own a business, a website is an integral and necessary element of running your company. Whatever your business, the internet can help you market and sell your products & services more cost effectively than ever before.

One of the greatest challenges in designing or enhancing a website is finding the right balance of appealing graphic design and strong technical features. Both must come together to create a website that helps your business generate revenue, acquire and retain customers and portray and build your corporate identity.

A professional website is an integral part of your overall corporate identity, and a consistent look to your marketing materials is essential?

The website design process should always begin with an in-depth consultation in order to learn more about the client, their business, and especially their expectations.

Graphic Design, Rethink the Ordinary
Good graphic design doesn't just happen. You should involve your clients every step of the way, because it's a collaborative process that requires communication, feedback, patience and experience. You should explore multiple ideas and concepts and discuss them with your client each step of the way. Design is a passion; it's a fun process and you should strive to get your client inspired as well so that they will return to you time and again for their graphic design needs.

Provide free consultations to discuss the graphic design needs. Research and a proper consultation with a prospective client is imperative to determine your corporate branding, industry, as well as determining who your competitors are.

Based on the information extracted from the consultation try to come up with a concept for preliminary designs and then allow the client to select the most appropriate options for further development and revisions.

Social Media
Social media marketing focuses on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it within their social networks. It is driven by word of mouth from trusted sources and results in earned popularity and respect.

Social Media has become more and more popular and is available to anyone with an internet access. Increased communication and a buzz created in close-knit circles and networks across platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter; to name just a few, helps to create company awareness and trust.

Through Social Networking sites, businesses can create conversations and interactions with customers and clientele creating a level of trust like never before. Businesses can also narrow, or target their marketing campaigns to a specific audience.

Social Networking allows users to Share, Tweet, or Repost articles, posts or other information with others in their trusted network creating a web of information about your product or service which can spread virally, all the while retaining a certain level of trust.

Good web design requires all of the elements mentioned above and more:
Good Graphic Design
Website Design
A good understanding of best practices regarding SEO
Social Media
and then the knowledge to pull all elements together to make them all work for the marketing and promotion of your business.