CALL US
(+614) 04 715 026

When it’s time for that big move to establish an online presence, it’s pretty common for most Melbourne business’ web design firms to talk about a lot of things with them. Search engine optimization, content, internal linking structures, functionalities, scripts, coding, and such things can fill a week of discussion between web designer and business owner.

But for all of that, there’s a tendency on the part of many website designers in Melbourne to not really discuss aesthetics. It’s really a pity, because the right aesthetics can give a company an immeasurable edge over its competition.

As the Web has advanced bit by bit (no pun intended) into the lives of everyday Australians, the need for a website to be not only functionally available but aesthetically pleasing to everyday individuals has increased exponentially. Clever Web 2.0 sites and social sharing options have only expanded the degree to which the public expects beauty and visual clarity in the websites it consumes.

Of course, there is still a driving need for functionality — but functionality is what web designers do. Not all of us have the same ability to create beauty as well as ease-of-use. More than ever, however, website designers need to do both.

The difficulty doesn’t even lie entirely in painting a pretty picture with your pixels — there are several code-based graphical issues that will mess up a beautiful site as well. For example, a site that looks perfect in a Mozilla-powered browser might utter fail under Opera or Chrome. Cross-browser aesthetic stability is one of those things that can take weeks to perfect, but is quite worthwhile when you can finally establish that everyone is seeing exactly the same site.

In many cases, a single web designer simply isn’t enough anymore. Most firms will have at least two people — the ‘designer’ and the ‘developer’ — working together to make sure that all aspects of the page come together perfectly. Before you hire any Melbourne website designer, ask them how their process works. If they don’t have at least a two-man team working together to get things done right, you might want to consider looking elsewhere.

On condition of anonymity, I was recently able to talk to one of the major players of web design in Melbourne. I asked him one simple question: “What do you consider the most important things to know about web design?”

Here are three gems that I got out of the resultant conversation:

“FOCUS. That means ‘Follow One Course Until Success’. You shouldn’t start designing a webpage until you know exactly what the finished product is going to look like. Once you know where you’re going, do that and exactly that — don’t get distracted by anything. Write your goal down before you start, and refer to it if you ever find that you don’t know what to do next.”

That’s not just good advice for website design, it’s good advice for life. I’ve had many a client switch things up on me midstream, and wished that they would follow this advice. Insofar as your clients don’t force you to change gears midproject, however, this is invaluable advice for any Melbourne web designer.

“Know the market. Don’t ever build a website without looking at the competition. People don’t get to the top of the SERPs (that’s Search Engine Results Pages) without doing something right. Look at them, take your inspiration from them, and then do something unique without doing something that will alienate the market.”

From experience, I know that it can be hard to create something that is both unique and still comfortable to the audience it’s intended for — but pulling that particular rabbit out of your hat is what top-tier web design is all about. Like everything else, it’s a skill that requires practice, but that practice will pay off in the end.

“Use your own website. It’s easy to think about the website from the business owner’s perspective — it’s a lot harder to pretend to be a ignorant end user that wouldn’t know a hyperlink from a hole in the ground. Before you publish anything, get yourself into the user mindset, put it up somewhere private, and take an honest look at it. If you can’t immediately identify what you’re supposed to do next, go back and work it until you can.”

Best. Advice. Ever. This little gem speaks for itself, so I’ll just get out of the way and let these sink in.

There’s a common perception in the world that the Land Down Under has it’s own rules for just about everything. (Thanks, football.) When it comes to most subjects, as much as we might like to think otherwise, we’re not that different from the rest of the world — and particularly not when it comes to the ‘Net. In the realms of online business, from affiliate marketing to web design, Australia runs by the same rules as the rest of the world.

That means that we, too, are subject to the same basic math as everyone else: income equals price times sales. Sales equals traffic times conversion rate. Traffic equals reads times clickthroughs. It’s an ever-descending number. Your content gets 1000 views, but only 10% clickthrough, so your sales page only gets 100 hits. Your sales page converts at 2%, so of those 100 hits, you get two sales. Each sale is worth $27, so your income is $54 for those 1000 content views.

You can improve your income by raising your price or by increasing your traffic — or you can do it by improving the clickthrough and/or conversion rates. You can’t improve the clickthrough rates of off-page content except by becoming a better writer — but quite often, as at least oneMelbourne online marketing firm has opined, good web design can create better conversions.

Better conversions, of course, mean more sales, and in turn improved income.

How does this happen? Simple. Design is divided into two basic components: the aesthetic component and the functional component. Both are required to maximize conversions.

Aesthetic Conversions
No matter how functional your webpage is, if it looks amateurish or worse yet garish, people will click away in a heartbeat. You know this is the problem if you have a high bounce rate, indicating that people aren’t even reading anything besides your headline before they run away.

Functional Conversions
Similarly, no matter how pretty your website is, if people can’t figure out how to get the information they want out of it — or worse yet, how to get to the “buy” button — they won’t purchase anything. You know this is the problem if you get lots of clickthroughs to weird pages, like people going from one landing page to another (instead of further down your sales funnel) or people going to your Privacy Policy page from a landing page.

There is a lot more to having a great website built for you than just telling the designer about your business and then letting him go to work. Whether you’re dealing with some bigshot corporate designer in New York or a local Melbourne web designer, you can be basically guaranteed that there are a few things you aren’t doing that you should be.

Ironically, none of these things has anything to do with web design — Melbourne‘s coders can take care of all of that themselves. It’s the stuff that they need to design around that they would love to have up front. Check it out:

Logos
A logo is a great starting point for the color scheme and general flavor of your website. In some cases, nearly every element of a website will flow naturally from the business’ logo. Even if the colors the designer picks aren’t actually in your logo, they will certainly be picked to complement and look good alongside it.

Ideally, you’ll be able to provide the precise colors for your logo in both RGB and CMYK values. That will allow your web designer to choose colors that will look good both on the monitor and in print form.

Branding
Branding is essentially a set of rules about how your logo, company name, and company motto (if any) are to be used on company properties. If, for example, you only want your logo to appear to the right of your company name for some graphical reason, knowing that can save your web designer a lot of heartache.

Communicating your branding guidelines effectively will make sure that our website looks like a coherent part of your company’s overall public image. If you don’t have any branding guidelines, you might consider modeling your company’s other goods around the website design in order to obtain the same final goal.

Content
Content simply means words, images, and videos that you want on your website. Without content, the best designer will create a beautiful empty plate — it’s up to you to put food on it for the public to consume. Having content prepared ahead of time allows the web designer to create an architecture that will suit that content.

Additionally, consider what kinds of future content you might want on your site, and communicate these potentials to your designer. Think not about your business as it is now, but how you want it to be in five years — that will give you proper fodder for considering how to direct your designer.