Website Design Archives - Page 5 of 8 - Tingalls Graphic Design

Website Design Best Practices: The Homepage Experience

Anyone with a driver’s license can get from point A to point B in a car. But to excel as a professional in NASCAR or Formula One racing, you’ve go to have some serious skills that have been attained by many years of study and real-world experience. Website design is the same way. Although you, or someone you know, may be able to put together a website, calling upon the expertise of a professional can go a long way in getting you to the “finish line” ahead of your competitors. There’s an art and craft to the process of website design — not only in creating an attractive aesthetic, but […]

Posted in Website Design

The Problem with “Bargain-priced” Services

No matter what type of business you have, or type of work you do, you may be faced with a critical question: do you discount? Whether it’s a discount house like Groupon, 99Designs, or simply running a “special” on your website, discounting services or products is something that requires much consideration. Why? Because it can have negative long-term affects on your business, your bottom line — and your reputation. Let’s examine when a discount may be a good idea, and when it should absolutely be avoided. In a retail environment, sales are part of the natural selling cycle. But even here, retail shops have undermined themselves by starting sales earlier […]

Posted in Graphic Design, Print & Package Design, Website Design

The Value of Outsourcing

Does your business outsource? Depending on the size of your company, you may outsource lots work to or you might currently have no partners you outsource to. Either way, we’ve got a question for you: what is your perceived value of outsourcing? Outsourcing can have an immense impact on the quality of your products or services, as well as the overall success of your company. When you alleviate difficult, time-consuming tasks that you might not be the best at (I have an immense shortcoming with accounting myself), you free up time to build your business. Being able to spend more time on improving sales, products or services means your company […]

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Website Design

Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?

People are using their mobile devices more and more to search the web, which beckons the question: is your website mobile friendly? If you’re not sure, the easiest way to answer this question is to simply view your website on a mobile device. If all the sections on your homepage load properly, you should be in good shape. If you’re finding that your site has overlapping boxes, is missing text areas, or you’re unable to access all the pages in your drop down menu, your website might need to be recoded or enhanced for mobile devices. There are a few options when it comes to making your site mobile friendly, including creating a “parallel” […]

Posted in Website Design

Are Native Ads a Good Solution for Your Website?

One of the current trends in marketing & web design is something called native ads, which is defined as “a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed.” This definition comes from Sharethrough, the world’s largest in-feed advertising exchange. What this means, in essence, is that native ads live within the content of a web page, as opposed to off to the side (usually in a right-side banner area) as we’ve grown accustomed to in web design over the years. Sharethrough’s opinion is that “native ads are more visually engaging than banner ads.” At Tingalls […]

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Website Design

The Importance of Your Website’s Title Tags, H1 Headlines & Meta Descriptions

Have you ever seen anyone using a metal detector on the beach? When they get close to a metal object, the device starts making noise because it can actually sense the metal. Search engines like Google and Bing function in a similar manner, but instead of looking for treasure, they’re searching for keywords. Two of the main areas search engines look for keywords are in your website’s title tags and “H1” headlines. If these areas are populated correctly, search engines have a better chance of detecting you, which can lead to higher page ranking on search results and increased traffic to your website. At Tingalls Graphic Design, part of our […]

Posted in Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Tips, Website Design

Is Your Website Design Aimed at High-Context or Low-context Customers?

The answer to this question can be a deciding factor in whether your website design is creating raving fans, or increasing your website’s bounce rate (the amount of people that leave your site in under 30 seconds). The theory of high-context and low-context cultures is a concept that was coined by Edward Hall in his 1976 book Beyond Culture. Now you might be thinking, back in 1976 there weren’t even personal computers, let alone an Internet, so how can an almost 40-year-old book have any relevance when it comes to websites? Good question. The answer lies in the underlying principals of Hall’s theory, which supposes that the culture of a […]

Posted in Branding, Marketing, Tips, Website Design

Are You Running Your Business with Passion?

How much of your business is affected by outside forces, rather than by internal passion? I’m not talking about listening and responding to customers — this is a cornerstone of any successful business. What I’m talking about is our ability to be true to who we are as a company — even if that means potential rejection. Back in the mid 1990s, Apple was allowing Mac clones to be produced by third party manufacturers. When Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997, he put that to an end. Steve wanted Apple computers to be made only by Apple. And he wanted them crafted with his vision in mind — […]

Posted in Branding, Marketing, Print & Package Design, Website Design

How Sketching with a Pencil Can Improve Graphic Design

Do you sketch with a pencil and pad or on your computer? In our digital world, more and more people are opting for sketching apps, but is something being lost in the process? The answer to this question depends on many factors, including your preferred art tools, as well as if you’re working on your own or with a group of designers. We recently ran across an article on the YouTheDesigner blog that inspired us to share some of our design process on our own blog. At Tingalls, our graphic design team uses both pencil & digital sketching to create our clients’ designs — but we always begin with our […]

Posted in Logo Design, Print & Package Design, Website Design

Best Practices for Website Design

Whether you have a website you’re looking to revamp, or are in the process of creating a new one, there are some best practices you’ll want to be aware of to make sure your website design is the best it can be. Not All Code is Created Equal Coding, or the language on which your website is built, is an important component of website design. If your code is built well, it will make for a better user experience because pages will function optimally and load faster. How your site is coded also affects your SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which is critical to gaining more traffic on your site. Content […]

Posted in Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design

Why Professional Website Designers Give You the Best Chance at Professional Results

We live in an interesting time as far as business web design and online marketing are concerned. On the one hand, there are more tools than ever that you can use to design a website, and more people than ever taking advantage of them. And at the same time, it’s never been more important to have the kind of site that attracts attention from search engines and sets you apart from your competitors. Given those two contradicting ideas, can you really get a great deal on a business website by using a template or hiring someone who might not have professional experience (like a student, or a computer-savvy family member)? […]

Posted in Website Design

Are You Using Your Website to Build Customer Loyalty?

Although most of our clients come to us for website design to attract new buyers, don’t forget your website can be a powerful tool for strengthening existing relationships, too. This can be a more important goal than you might realize. After all, it takes a lot more time and effort to find new customers vs. maintaining genuine relationships which those companies who have already purchasd from you. So, how are you using your business website to build customer loyalty? Here are seven of our favorite tools that help you keep buyers coming back and boost your bottom line: 1. Coupons and discount codes for repeat customers. Nothing says “thank you” […]

Posted in Tips, Website Design

10 Tips to a Better Website

Too many people create a website and then just let it sit and expect it to do all the work without any attention. In today’s competitive web environment and with the search engines placing a large degree of importance on recent web information this just isn’t a viable option. If you want to have the best website possible, you need to add updates on a fairly frequent basis. We’ve come up with 10 small tips that will boost the appeal of your website and make it more effective. 1. Call to Action. Don’t be afraid to ask for the sale. If your website is designed to have people do something, […]

Posted in Branding, Tips, Website Design

Are You Making it Easy for New Customers to Find You Online?

If you’ve ever hired someone to work on Internet marketing or a search engine optimization campaign, you probably already understand how important keywords are to the visibility of your business website. But, do you know how to find the best ones… the terms and phrases that make it easy for new customers to find you online? Although a lot of business owners and executives don’t spend much time thinking about keywords, they can literally make or break your campaigns. When people search for information for companies on the Internet using sites like Google and Bing (or even social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn), the results are compiled and arranged […]

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Tips, Website Design

5 Signs You've Gotten Bad Search Engine Optimization Advice

Search engine optimization and Internet marketing have gotten to be big enough, and complex enough, that most businesses wouldn’t even dream of trying to manage things on their own. There are just too many concepts to take in, and details to stay on top of, for the average owner or executive to handle in-house. In most cases, they turn to businesses like ours who can help them increase their rankings on Google and turn search engine traffic into a stream of new customers. But what if the advice or service they are getting isn’t accurate, or up to date? Unfortunately, that situation is more common than you might think – […]

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Tips, Website Design

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