Advanced Design Utah

4 Things to Check Out When Hiring Web Design Companies

Lee Stevens — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:45:26 +0000

Need help in choosing the right web design companies? You’ve come to the right place since we specialize in Utah web design services. We will help you finish one aspect of your work and get you started on building your company’s site.

Hiring a web design company seems to be best option for companies, even if they have an in-house web design team. This is because creating a website from scratch can take a lot of time. And if your web design team has a lot of things on their plate, it would be better if you just let somebody else do the job.

There are a lot of competent web design companies out there. A simple search online will yield thousands of choices. You need to carefully screen each web design company to be sure that your web design project is in good hands.

Here are some helpful tips when choosing between web design companies:

Check out their website. A good web design company must have a professional-looking site. It should be eye-candy, easy to navigate and up-to-date with the latest trends. A company that has a poorly-done site doesn’t deserve to be hired. If they are as good as they claim to be, it should reflect in their site.

Check out testimonials. Web design companies that have worked with various clients would surely have created an impression. These can be gauged through the different testimonials provided by their previous clients. Usually, testimonials are placed on the company’s website.

Check out their portfolio. You need proof of web design companies’ expertise. What better way to find out how good they are than taking a look at their past projects, right? Ask for their sample works. See if they have previously worked on something that is similar to your project. You can also check out the sites of their previous clients. See if they are still up and running, and if they appeal to you as a visitor. That should say a lot about the kind of work they do.

Check out other services that they offer. See if these web design companies offer other services that can be of great use to you like Search Engine Optimization. This is a crucial part of having a website made. Eventually, you will want to have your site to rank well in search engines. SEO can greatly help you out with this.
So there, you have the 4 things you need to check out when hiring web design companies.

Planning on Creating Your Website? Remember These 3 Essential Elements

Greg Williams — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:15:46 +0000

If you are planning to create a website for my business, remember these three important elements of a web design: good content, usability, and SEO.

Setting up a website takes a lot of time, effort, and money. And if you are really serious about making a successful business, you need to invest a lot for your website. Before deciding to venture into launching your business online, make sure that you have read and learn as much as you can about effective web design.

And here I am, ready to have my first website done. Based on all the things I have learned, I came up with 3 very important elements of web design that I want to focus on. Hopefully, this will also be beneficial for others who are planning to come up with their own website. Here they are:

Good content

A website will be worthless if there is no content. This will convey your business’ message. If you are selling something, you will need to come up with a great copy to entice your visitors to buy from you.

Make sure that you come up with quality content for your site. This will set you apart from the rest. Do not commit the mistake others have before you. If you search the web, you will see a lot of websites that have badly-written content. This will frustrate visitors. How can you make someone trust you enough to buy from you if you can’t come up with a decent content?

Bear this in mind: your content will say a lot about your site. There is no excuse for coming up with a sloppy content.

Usability

Your web design should fulfill two goals: yours and your customers’. Your web design should help you generate traffic and sales. Similarly, this should also provide customers what they need: information. The only way they will feel good about buying from you is if they can get something relevant from you.

SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is very important in every site. This will help you place well in search engines results pages. And when you are ranked well in Google or Yahoo! you have a better chance of being seen by people. It works this way: if you want to increase your sales, you need people to visit your site. To do that, you need to be at least at the first page of Google or Yahoo!’s results pages. SEO will help you achieve this.

So there you are, the 3 essential things you need to include in your web design.

Using Your Personal Gmail Account To Send & Receive Your Business Email

Greg Williams — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:13:40 +0000

Almost anyone I know has a Gmail account that they use to send personal emails. Gmail has made is very easy to receive and send business emails from your personal Gmail account using your business email address. The video below walks you through the process.

Accessing Your Hostmonster or BlueHost Webmail

Greg Williams — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:08:06 +0000

A lot of our clients host their websites with us for the first two months of the life of their website. That is one awesome perk of doing business with us. As part of this, we need to always teach people how to access their business via webmail. Since we host all of our clients sites on Hostmonster or BlueHost servers, this video will show you exactly how to access your webmail.

Learning How To Use WordPress – WordPress Tutorial

Greg Williams — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:21:24 +0000

Since almost all of our websites we build are build on the WordPress content management system, we thought we would put together a quick video to help our clients quickly learn how to navigate the back end of their websites and learn how to make quick changes to their sites.

myhosting.com Twitter Contest

Greg Williams — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:44:06 +0000

So, one of our web hosting providers that we use and recommend to our customers is holding a twitter contest. Entering the contest is free and you will be entered to win one of three free web hosting packages.

Here are the details right from their website:

So here’s the deal: We are going to be giving away three free web hosting packages. Want to win one?
Here’s all you have to do to enter…

Follow @myhosting on Twitter. If you don’t have an account you can sign up for free.
Simply tweet the following:
I just entered to win 1 of 3 FREE web hosting packages! Follow @myhosting and retweet http://bit.ly/myhosting

Want to increase your chances of winning? Get two extra entries by following these additional steps:

Blog about this contest, then tweet the URL where your blog post can be found @myhosting
Link to myhosting.com from your website or blog, then tweet the URL where the link can be found @myhosting

Make sure to tweet it to @myhosting, it puts it to our attention.

We will send a DM (direct message) to the winners and announce them on our blog by October 15, 2009, or when we hit 10,000 followers. We will give you 24 hours to respond to accept your prize. Good Luck!
This contest is open to anyone with a Twitter account.

You can go ahead and read the details at this page too.

You should go ahead and enter the contest. Who knows, you might be able to win some pretty sweet web hosting!

Good Navigation Can Make Your Website Design Very Effective

Greg Williams — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:08:32 +0000

How can you make a visitor stay in your web site longer? You can do that through good navigation.

Your website design should have a well-constructed navigation. This is very important to your site and business because it can spell your success or failure. If visitors find it hard to go around your website, they are more likely to get out and look for another site whose website design is more navigation-friendly.

Your website design should be easy to navigate. In the business, there is a thing called the 3-click rule. This rule simply states that a visitor must be able to find what he is looking for within 3 clicks. Anything beyond that is ineffective, and may cause your visitor to try his luck on another site.

People are always looking for information. And if they come to your site, that is exactly what they want to find. And they need to get it fast. They wouldn’t like it if the important stuff is concealed in a lot deeper page. You need to make sure that your visitors can get what they want with as few clicks as possible.

Instant gratification plays a big role in website design.

So if you want to have an effective website design, you need to give due attention to your site’s navigation. There are several locations for your navigation elements. They can be:

- Top menu

- Left side navigation

- Right side navigation

- Bottom menus

Meanwhile, here are the different navigation elements you can use in your website design:

Login boxes – you need to place your login boxes in the most obvious places. Most website designs place login boxes at the top left and right area of the page.

Internal page links – each page in your site needs to be connected to each other. Remember that each page should be within 3 clicks away from the home page.

Order buttons – website designs for sites that sell merchandise need these buttons. These should be large and visible enough to be seen by the visitors the first time they enter the site.

Shopping carts – for websites that sell items, the shopping cart buttons should be placed in each page of the site, situated in an area that can be easily seen by the visitors.

Site map – this is an important part of a website design. This is an effective way of laying out the content of your site. This shows a chronological listing of each page on your site.

The Perfectly Optimized Website

Lee Stevens — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:27:49 +0000

This was just a cool graphic that I built for a presentation I did a few weeks ago. It is a representation of a perfectly optimized website. If you have any questions, please add them to the comment section and I can answer them.

Web Design – Plastic Surgeons In SoCal

Lee Stevens — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:26:40 +0000

We are starting to do a little more web design in the state of California. We were considering not doing a site having to do with plastic surgery, but it was agreed upon with the client that we would not be responsible for uploading or adding any nudity to the site. This is a directory of Plastic Surgeons in Southern California.

Web Hosting With HostMonster

Lee Stevens — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:38:19 +0000

I am kind of biased towards HostMonster because they are pretty much neighbors of mine and I personally know their CEO Matt Heaton.

I have been hosting my websites with HostMonster for years and completely love their service! It is perfect for what I do as an SEO and affiliate marketer.

HostMonster is one of the fastest growing web hosting companies online and it’s no secret why. When suggesting hosting companies for our clients, we either recommend HostMonster or myhosting.com. Here is why HostMonster is a great choice for your web hosting needs.

Free domain registration and renewal for life.
You have unlimited space to host your websites. You will never need to purchase additional disk space or hosting, ever!
You are given unlimited site bandwidth. Not even a million visitors streaming video right from your site will cause your site to go down.
You can host an unlimited number of domains on one account. Because you have unlimited hosting space, these sites can be as big and data intensive as you want.
Your new domain is instantly set up and you can use your site right away.
One click installer for over 50 different script and applications like WordPress.
99.9% network up time guarantee.
$25 in FREE Yahoo credits.
$50 in FREE Google credits.

As you can clearly see, HostMonster is awesome! I host with both them and myhosting.com and can feel good about recommending either for your web hosting needs.

To get started with HostMonster or to learn more about their services, click here.