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Most companies today have a website, it is essential in order to compete with rival businesses. However, if you have a poorly designed website it can prove to be detrimental to your company rather than beneficial. The main reasons for having a company website are to establish a presence online and also to gain new customers or clients. It is important to have your website designed by professional web designers to ensure that it is attractive as well as functional. Three main factors of a successful website are multiple browser usability, Minimal loading times using CSS and an html code without loading errors or prolonged loading times.

The user’s first impression of a website is crucial to whether they will click through to more pages or instantly leave and find another site. It is estimated that 50% of potential repeat visits are lost due to inadequate web design. Users need to know exactly what the company is offering and be able to navigate through the site with ease. Professional web designers will discuss with you exactly what your business does, your customers and what your expectations are. Poorly designed websites are immediately obvious and are often the main cause of the failure of small businesses. Get ahead of your competitors and have a professional website that is not just read by customers but also by search engines. First Internet is a company that can help you achieve website success!

The information society is even more relevant today, we are constantly accessing web design on the move through our internet-enabled phones. Will we depend more on local search? Perhaps.. however when we are out and about, our search behaviour is different to searching on a desktop as we need access to information quickly. Whether it be a specific location, directions to a restaurant, bar or shop.

The new Google Maps version released this month has enabled cyclists to find their way using mobile search. I believe this will be an invaluable tool for any cyclist who gets lost in the countryside.

Mobile search is also used to compare prices on the high street. We are time poor and this can save us time by cutting out walking from shop to shop.

Amazon and eBay have certainly taken note of mobile search by creating ’search, shop and buy’ and an iPhone app.

What is your most popular mobile search?

Christmas 2010 will go down in history as the time when all retailers realised they could no longer afford to ignore online. As the high street struggled with spiralling market conditions and dwindling consumer confidence, online retailers enjoyed record sales and an increase in the number of people buying online.

Recent figures from the IAB revealed that one in ten people do all their shopping online, while over 67% consumers say that they go online to shop at least twice a week. Another report, conducted by online consumer watchdog, ‘Think Tank’ found that the majority of people would prefer to buy from a brand that had a website.

The evidence speaks for itself, for businesses to survive the current market conditions; they must have an online presence.

Unlike the US, many retailers in the UK have been quite slow to embrace – m-commerce. In the ever changing world of web design, it is vital that e-tailers keep on top of customer demands, especially in the current market conditions.

When you consider that the number of people accessing the internet via their mobile phones has grown exponentially in the past year, it seems inconceivable that many retailers in the UK do not have a website with m-commerce functionality. Especially as this pace of growth is only going accelerate as SmartPhone innovations become increasingly sophisticated.

While many retailers have released i-phone applications, most of these are ill-conceived and not supported by a mobile website; therefore, user ability has been compromised.

The message for e-tailers is clear; if you want to introduce an element of m-commerce into your marketing mix, make sure your mobile proposition is consistent and you have applied the same standards of web design as you have on your main site. Only then can the potential of m-commerce be truly realised.

Some surveys estimate that the average Briton faces 3,000 marketing messages a day. Therefore, when faced with an advert – either on or off-line – we change the channel, hit mute, block our cookies or leave a website.

Therefore, over the past decade brands and their agencies have increasingly targeted our conversation and sought to invade editorial when we are least expecting it. First it began with manipulating social media platforms such as FaceBook and Twitter, now they are engaging in more stealth and subversive marketing tactics.

But why not just get it right in the beginning? Regardless of demographics, every marketeer wants to communicate their brand to an engaged and interested consumer. When are consumers more engaged and interested than when they have sought your website, found it and are then browsing through what you have to offer?

We are not saying that social media marketing doesn’t have a place in the mix, but simply that if you get it right from the point of web design, users will ‘WANT’ to engage with your brand elsewhere, rather than simply clicking on.

Here at First Internet, we always encourage our clients to see their online activity as one element of their whole marketing mix. Indeed, for us, our most successful online campaigns have been those which integrate all online activities, from web design and PPC to SEO and Affiliate Marketing.

Today, a recent report by Sky.com has shown that consumers are now demanding that brands take integration online, one step further. According to research by Sky Media more than one in three customers interacting with red-button campaigns go on to buy the advertised brands online for the first time.

Social networking and digital gifts – small images that user trade with each other – seem to be a match made in web design heaven. There’s a vast array of social networks out there and everyone on them seems to be sending someone else something.
But when does this seeming bit of web design fun, become something much more serious – in short, when do the lawyers get involved? As we are aware brand owners take their intellectual property rights very seriously, this also extends to the way in which there brand is managed online.

A developer taking brand logo and publishing it onto a Facebook page or making it into a digital gift which users can buy, may seem harmless, but consider this sobering thought; brand owners enforce their intellectual property rights with an almost obsessive quality. And judges don’t just award damages when the brand owners win, the hand over a share of the developer’s profits

In yesterday’s post we discussed the fact that many sites are losing business due to a poor returns policy and today a report reveals that e-tail businesses in the UK are losing millions pounds worth of custom due to poor web design and errors in web analytics.

Web analytics failing to detect hidden errors occurring during customer journeys, according to the SciVisum, Lost Online Sales Study.

The report said that analytics results fail to show errors such as pages not delivered, jump backs and shopping basket faults, so etailers are failing to rectify problems.

Etailers with a high street presence are failing consumers, with two in five restricting customers from returning items bought online to stores, according to a report by ecommerce technology specialist Snow Valley.

Of 43 retailers that had a network of store, only 13 allowed items to be returned by post. Sarah Cleland, marketing manager at Snow Valley, said although some online divisions of retailers’ offering operate as a separate channel to the in-store arm, consumer aren’t always aware of this.

This again highlights the importance of effective web design in e-tail sites.

Stephen Fry is at it again, Tweeting, that is. But this time he is using the latest innovation in web design Twibbon. Twibbon is the new way to publicize a cause online.

Historically, social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have been under exploited in terms of generating traffic for charitable causes. Twibbon enables users to put their web design skills to the test, by customizing their own online space with a cause of their choice.

The web design process is easy, using Twibbon.com, Twitter users can paste the branding of their charity of choice in their status update bar.

Dan Moss, used the web designs skill he learnt in Manchester to promote his charity of choice World Aids.