Whilst the web offers massive sales opportunities, it takes specialist knowledge and constant research and web design intervention to actually secure orders online. Getting traffic to your web site is important. Search engine optimisation to improve your web site’s organic ranking on search engines and pay per click will get you traffic. But traffic alone will not fetch you sales. You could literally have hundreds of visits to your web site and end up with no leads at the end of the day. If you are paying for your clicks, it could be a big waste of money.

The average web surfer i.e. your potential web design customers spends about 10 seconds on your web site. That is a very short time but it is the only window of opportunity you might have to sell your web design services and products to that potential customer. Putting together the web design solution that will work and deliver this tall order is the key to a successful web design business or any business for that matter.

You cannot beat marketing research in planning any selling tools and you do not have to be a marketing guru to start thinking marketing. Start by deciding which segment of the web design market you want to target. Is it the discount low cost segment or are you more into the corporate web design sector? Selling discount web design through a corporate sophisticated web site might put the potential low budget customers off. Conversely, corporate customers looking for an expensive, high end and sophisticated web design would expect their supplier to have a corporate web site.

Once you have established which segment of the web design market you are serving and decided on the ‘discount’ or corporate look, start looking at the web design elements and where these fit on your homepage. A good starting point to putting together an effective web page that works is research on the behaviour of web surfers. Try typing ‘heat map’ into Google and look for ‘Where should I place Google ads on my page?’ The web site offers some indication of the ‘hot spots’ on a web page i.e. the areas where web visitors are most likely to spend time looking. Use this as a first step in putting together your web design. Try placing your key product offers and contact details in the hottest spots of the heat map – showed as bright orange on the heat map.

Once our web site is online, no amount of reading can beat a good testing procedure for your web design. Get your web site online and start analysing what’s happening. Look at your basic stats like number of visits. Then start looking a bit deeper into your stats using some analytic tools to check the effectiveness of your web design. Google offers some free analytics tools that allow you to easily find out which links visitors are or are not clicking on your web page.

Look at important links that are key to generating leads, like your ‘request a quote button’. If these important links are being ignored, start tweaking the web design look and feel to make them more prominent and visible of on your web site. Use position (remember the heat map), bright colours and catchy words to draw the attention of your potential web design customers.

When it comes to the look and feel of your web design solution, remember that looking pretty is not enough. The web site must respond to key marketing issues like your market segment and web surfer behaviour. The next time you visit a web page, try and see if the look and feel achieves the objectives of the web site.

An internship would be fine too, but I don’t know how to get into one of those either.

http://www.hereiamlive.com/DL/Downloads/.

Making your first web design is easy, it is creating something well that can become difficult. You would have a hard time using just one of the aforementioned programs to design a good website. The images for the new web design would have to be altered and buttons would have to be created. Now an imaging software solution must be considered. The most obvious imaging solution for web design would be to PhotoShop; but again even on Ebay the product is sold for two or three hundred dollars. There is an open source alternative to this program as well, the Gimp Shop. This software will be more than enough for all the web design needs for the beginner and advanced web designers. The Gimp can be downloaded from the above link as well. For a more simple imaging solution you might take a look at Macromedia’s fireworks. I find it be the most effective when making buttons or overlaying text onto buttons for my web design. This software is anywhere from sixty to one hundred dollars on Ebay.

Now that you have the tools to start your new web design it’s time to learn how they work. The learning curve on the products I have suggested are the best out there, but that does not mean you will be able to sit down without any training and bust out a quality web design in a day. You will need some help. I suggest you visit our Hereiamlive Web Design Help Forum http://www.hereiamlive.com/forum/index.php

The Hereiamlive Web Design Help Forum has many articles on web design and the development of websites. The site hosts a variety of free training videos, and a questions and answers section where you can have your web design questions answered by a professional for free.

Your are now armed with the tools and knowledge to create a professional web design. Your main challenge is to create a good web design is learning the more complex workings of your imaging software. After you master the image layering and some of the available specials effects your web designs will look vastly improved. Once you accomplish making a few professional web designs I would recommend learning Macromedia Flash to spice up your websites. Remember when using Flash you do not want to use too much as the search engines have a hard time picking up the Flash code. You always want to have a search engine friendly web design so sometimes less is more.

Well, hope this article helps with your web design needs.

Good Luck, and may all your first web design be a great one!

By: Corey Turcotte

www.hereiamlive.com