Before a user visits your website, they need to know that the experience won’t be a waste of their time. It’s important to earn the trust of your visitors both before and after they visit your website so they’ll keep coming back.

Trust is the assured reliance on the character, strength, ability or truth of someone or something. Trust is what makes us vulnerable. Before a user visits your site, they trust you by believing that your site is going to help them somehow—whether it’s to buy a product, learn something, or for entertainment purposes, they are coming to your website for a reason. They are investing their time. If they don’t find what they’re looking for, or if they aren’t happy with the website, you can guarantee that they won’t be back.

So how do you establish trust with users? First, make sure your website is usable. If a user can’t figure out how to navigate your site, they won’t be able to accomplish their goals. Second, aesthetics do matter. Let’s assume you’re shopping for a backpack. You found two backpacks you like, for the same price, on two different websites. If one website has interesting graphics, a nice easy-to-use layout, and a quick checkout option, while the other has a plain white background with odd formatting, chances are you’ll buy from the first website. Why? Because the first website is more trustworthy.

When it comes to trust, consistency and familiarity are also very important. Everything about the website you build is a promise; from the font, the content, and the layout. Consistency is important because it tells your users what to expect through every step of the process. Unexpected messages or a lack of a confirmation message can throw a user off. If a user is expecting a “thank you for your purchase” message to pop up on their computer after they bought something and it doesn’t show up, it’s going to leave them confused and uncomfortable. Those messages and e-mails confirm their trust in you.

Many of us hesitate when we see websites that ask for a user’s credit card information for a “free” trial of a service or product. We need to know that it’s going to be worth it. Money makes people vulnerable. If you’re selling a product, you need to make sure your user feels comfortable buying it. Are there a lot of pictures of your products? Can a user zoom in? Have you provided measurements, materials, and reviews? Do you accept returns? All these things can build trust.

Effective communication is essential in relationships. Once a user has given you a chance, you need to communicate with them and treat them with respect. The most successful websites use a friendly, conversational tone that’s almost like reading an email. Listening is important too—a user will bash you over social media if you don’t. If they’re extremely unhappy, they’ll write bad reviews wherever they can. Keeping a user’s trust is just as important as earning it.

Get to know your users. Learn from them. Follow through on the promises that your website makes. Take advantage of every single opportunity you have to make it clear to your users that you are worth their investment of time, attention, information, and money. If you can help them accomplish their goals, you’ll both get the return you want.

There are many challenges to keeping a project on track and within budget. By taking a few precautions and by having a specific plan in place, you can lead your project to guaranteed success. Here are 6 tips and tricks to help ensure your project goes as planned:

1) Communicate, communicate, communicate
Always ensure that the lines of communication are open. As the project manager, it’s your job to be the operator of the communications system. Make a plan and stick with it. Keep everyone informed by creating status reports based on a project’s information and updates. Good project managers will document everything. If it can be documented it should be documented. Any information is pertinent to the team—even the comment from the CEO about how he strongly dislikes the color you’ve decided to use—is important. Relay any and all information to the team, you never know what might become an issue later.

2) Be the leader
You are the captain of the ship. You should act like it. You need to inspire your team, you need to encourage them, and you need to carry on during the tough trials that you will face. If you don’t have good leadership skills, you may not be able to prevail over challenges that face your project. Address your strengths and weaknesses—because they will be tested.

3) Set and manage the expectations
The expectations of your project should be set by a descriptive, well-written scope of work. All team members should use and refer to this document to set the stage for what will be ultimately delivered on each project. As project manager, you should sit down with your client and review the project timeline. It’s imperative to have these types of conversations with your client—you need to keep them informed of the process for the duration of the project.
Between each deadline, set up a meeting with the client about the upcoming document delivery. Receive their constructive feedback about the document—it’ll make the final deliverable a lot stronger. It’s critical to educate your clients on the process of making a website. If you keep the client informed and involved, you’re guaranteed to build a product that pleases your client and engages your users.

4) Know who to involve and when to involve them
It’s impossible to keep everyone in the project informed of everything—and that’s a good thing because you don’t necessarily need to. It’s good to know when to involve the team to help a conversation or an idea, but you don’t need to do it for everything. A project developer should never answer design or development specific questions unless it was previously documented. Know what the client is asking: Is the question design or development specific? Is it a question regarding content? Pull the appropriate people for each question—but you don’t need to have a meeting every time the client calls with an idea.

5) Find an ally and manage stakeholders
A good project manager will find a friend on the client-side. He or she should try to do their best to build a relationship with that person. A strong relationship can help the project manager learn the politics of the company and how it’ll affect the project’s process. Having an ally can help you gain guidance: a simple, short conversation where you ask, “Who do I need to approve X project?” can give you valuable insight.
As project manager, it’s your job to predict the potential factors that could make the project go over deadline or over budget. If you know and manage your stakeholders, it becomes a lot easier for you to have blunt conversations about why and when a project might go off track.
No project manager wants to be the bad guy. But as a manager, it’s part of your role. Set everything up in your favor so you can be in control about the risks—at least most of the time.

6) Encourage your team
Simple, encouraging sentences like, “Wow, you did a really good job!” can really go along way. A great project manager is one who enforces the rules, keeps everyone in-sync, and supports and encourages the process, the team, and the client.

“Knowing your audience” is associated with data. “Understanding your audience” is about learning about the people behind the numbers. Knowing is having specific information—like having 34,000 unique visitors a month, while understanding is more about discovering a user’s likes, dislikes, social and cultural situations, and who they are as a person.

Understanding your audience isn’t just important. It’s crucial. The success of your business and your website depends on your user’s happiness. If you understand your audience, you can make informed decisions when you design for a specific type of user. However, unless you conduct some sort of research, it’s hard to get an understanding of who your users are and what they want. Content strategist Relly Annett-Baker summed it up nicely, “I do not trust stakeholders to know their audience unless they have conducted some sort of research. They either talk about the audience they had when they were still largely in contact with them day-to-day, or the one they’d like.”

Just understanding your audience can help you make decisions in regard to imagery, typefaces, and colors. For example, certain cultures view colors differently. In one country the color yellow might be associated with hope or joy, but in another, it’s associated with cowardice and weakness. A simple understanding of our audience can help us with the basic fundamentals of design.

Establish a framework:

Select research methods that can offer the most detail. Once you gather that information, you need to determine the meaning from the data to find the individual stories within. It’s helpful to categorize the information you receive into basics, lifestyle, and media.

“Basics” would cover age, nationalities, location, gender, and numbers. “Lifestyle” data would contain information concerned with employment, socioeconomic status, religion, money, and education. The “media” category would provide insight into your user’s consumption of TV, radio, internet, technology, and printed media. How old are your users? What TV shows do they like to watch, what type of jobs do they have? All these questions can help you understand your audience and appropriately design for them.

Use the right tools:

Some of the best research methods available are focus groups, questionnaires, social media, and interviews. Services like SurveyMonkey can help you design specific surveys and questionnaires. There are pros and cons to each of these methods—so it’s helpful to use more than one resource to get the most information possible.

Once you have the information, you need to understand the meaning of it—that’s the hard part.

Don’t forget the client:

The research you gathered should help your client, too. Sure, the color and design of the website is important, but you also need to make sure your research framework is related to the goals of your client’s business. Help your client by finding out who the target audience is and what they want.

You can use your information as a selling point—understanding your audience and backing up the information you know with hard data is a great way to get the client to buy into your designs. It’s good to “know,” but overall, it’s better to “understand.” Understanding your audience is essential for the overall success of your website.

Make the most of your ecommerce site—here’s how

Despite the rough state of the economy, the ecommerce sector remains one of the few bright stars posting growth. According to The Boston Consulting Group, the UK’s internet economy was valued at £100 billion in 2009. Most of this growth was comprised of online shopping.

Here are some tips on how to make the most from your ecommerce website:

Make your website clear, concise, and easy

Your website should have clear navigation, a concise product page, an effective site search, and unique content rich with photos and videos. You also need an easy-to-use check out process. These basic elements will help maximize your site for both conversions and SEO. However, you can take it even further—other specific elements of site structure can have an impact on improving your sales.

Simple steps, like removing the requirement of customer registration, is a quick way to increase conversions. You can also use Google Website Optimizer to test alternative versions of the principal check out pages. Filtering can also have a dramatic conversion boost—faceted search/faceted navigation are really popular on large ecommerce sites like ASOS. You can filter by style, size, price, or brand. Because these categories, sub-categories, and filtered search results have “clean” URLs, they can be indexed by search engines. Just incorporating “white soccer shoes size 10” into the URL is not only more user-friendly, but it’s a lot better in terms of SEO than a query string of random characters and numbers.

Building links is also a key factor for improving search engine rankings. A great way to attract links is to take advantage of user-generated product reviews. Just by keeping a regularly updated blog and releasing information related to your business can help you acquire links—just make sure that you build your links at the top category pages as well as the homepage. Many companies make the mistake of using the default product descriptions shared by competitors. This content is considered duplicate content—and duplicate content ranks poorly on Google. Well written and interesting content not only helps with SEO, but it also helps with conversion, too.

Get into social media

Recently, Google and Bing stated that they started using “social signals” as part of their ranking algorithms. These social signals (Facebook “likes” and tweets) can help a company’s ranking. Maintaining an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, and sites similar are crucial for the success of your ecommerce site.

Customer reviews directly influence your site’s visitors. Some customer review modules are so advanced that they enable visitors to ask questions and receive answers on individual product pages via their Facebook profiles.

You can even e-mail customers a few days after a sale to receive valuable information. One creative way to receive reviews is by offering discounts or prize opportunities for every review received. Companies that use their social presence to connect directly to their customer have some of the best outcomes. Overall, trust converts visitors into customers. Real reviews from real customers are a great way to gain trust and get the conversion you want.

Defending your data is important—if you don’t, you can suffer severe consequences

It’s easy to overlook security. Everyday people forget to “lock things.” Sometimes it’s a car door or the locker at the gym, and sometimes its data. Most of the time, nothing happens. But when something does happen—it can wreck havoc in our lives. Recently the social network Formspring was ravaged by a hacker. The hacker broke in to one of its development servers and used the access to collect private user account information. Securing your data is important. If you don’t—you never know what could happen to your clients, your work, or your career.

Here are 10 easy ways to secure your data:

1). Start at the beginning: Don’t assume that the project you’re working on is insignificant or “unworthy” of hacking. It’s a lot easier to start a concrete foundation in the beginning of a project then implement one half-way through.

2). Generate Artificial Data: Keeping live user data in a development setting is a bad idea. GenerateData is a great tool that generates realistic artificial data. It can be used in place of real user data.

3). Avoid unsecured wireless networks: Although it might be fun to hit up a local coffee shop or restaurant while working, you should avoid using public networks. It’s essential to lock down ports, use public/private key authentication, and restrict development server access to specific IPs.

4). Keep everything up-to-date: Your operating system, sever software, and anti-virus software should all be kept up-to-date to alleviate attack, new viruses, and resilient hackers.

5). Remove data imprints: Tools like Eraser and CCleaner can erase any data imprints from drives. You should securely delete elements of your development infrastructure that you no longer use or need.

6). Never take shortcuts: Ensure that data backups and checked-in-code are both encrypted and stored in a safe, secure location. Never take short cuts when it comes to securing your backups.

7). Test within a closed environment: Use strong, unique passwords for all of your test accounts. Test within a closed environment—especially if you’re developing a social element to your application.

8). Physically secure your work: Your work should always be physically secure—it doesn’t matter if your infrastructure is a complex load-balanced network of app and database cloud severs or your personal laptop. Physical machines are easier to access. Lock screens and encrypt all drives. If your data is stolen, encryption software like TrueCrypt and PGP can ensure your data is useless in the hands of a hacker.

9). ISO 27001: If you are using a hosting environment, select one that is ISO 27001 accredited. A hosting environment that is ISO 27001 accredited meets the international baseline information security management standards of availability, confidentiality, and integrity.

10). Use strong passwords: The longer the password, the better. Ideally, your passwords should be at least 15 characters long and contain uppercase, lowercase, symbols, and digits. Don’t use the same password across multiple accounts.

Securing your production and development environments is critical to your success. It’s easy to cut corners when you’re stressed or when you have a lot on your plate. However, in the long run it’s better to take the extra time to ensure your work is secured—you never know how much time and reputational damage could happen if your work falls into the wrong hands.

It’s crucial to build stimulating visuals around your narrative

Adding depth and richness to your web designs is necessary for optimal visual interactivity. Using the parallax technique is one of the many ways web designers can do this. Parallax is a “displacement or different in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight.” In web design, the parallax technique delivers depth and movement on a page by scrolling two or more different image elements across different site lines.

The Parallax technique has recently become popular with companies and websites like Smokey Bones, Beer Camp, Campaign Monitor, and Movember and we’ve included how they’ve implemented the technique with examples below. These companies add visual interactivity by having movement follow your mouse from the left as a user moves around on a screen. Another way to utilize the Parallax technique is by building vertical scrolling into every page to create a uniquely rich user experience as they make their way down your website’s page.

You want to entertain your audience. The best way to get this trick to work in a big way is not to use the Parallax to look “cool” or to be “cutting edge.” You want the Parallax to work the effect around a narrative, or a story. People want to be entertained. People want a story. If you as a web designer, can involve the visitor into your “story,” you can ultimately get them to do what you want: buy something. The Parallax can do this. Give them something to dig their eyes into. Give them something they can connect with.

Give your audience a narrative. Think about one of your favorite websites. Why did you remember it? The reason you remember it is probably because you recall a great narrative built around some really cool visuals. Narrative in web design is crucial. Whatever you design, a user visiting you or your company’s website is experiencing something. You want to make sure “what they experience” is a good experience. Create a good narrative.

Here are five great examples to check out:

Smokey Bones: The restaurant chain Smokey Bones’ sells barbeque sandwiches and burgers. They use the parallax effect to sell the experience of dining at their BBQ joint. (http://smokeybones.com/)

Beer Camp: The interactive studio throws a major party at SXSW each year. This website was created for their 2011 event. Beer Camp scrolls type and images from itself. At first it’s a little confusing, but after you understand what they’re doing, it’s pretty cool. (http://2011.beercamp.com/)

Campaign Monitor: Campaign Monitor, an email marketing app, recently decided to start hiring new employees. They created a vertical scrolling parallax based website on their careers page to show what it’s like to work there. (http://www.campaignmonitor.com/careers/)

Movember: This website is really just a large invitation card, but the invite unfolds as a user scrolls. As you scroll you find out more details about the event, at the end, you’re invited to make a ticket purchase. (http://mosandbows.com.au/)

Utilizing the internet is one of the best ways to be able to reach new customers.  Your website design agency will have the proper experience to be able to create a website for you that is accessible for all who wish to view it.

In the United States alone in 2011, there were over 56,000,000 people alive and over the age of 60.  While this may at first seem like an inconsequential number, consider its importance. As people age mobility and health become more of an issue. Many seniors today are looking for access to information, resources and sources of supplies for their current needs. Children have now grown up with internet use as part of their life many seniors did not have this same education. Website design agency companies that are designing sites for their clients need to ensure that their website is easy to navigate. If they have products of interest to all ages, they need to ensure that they are easily searchable on their pages.  Yes, flash sites and animated pages are catchy and classy but are the links easy to find?  Talk to your website design agency about the ease of use of your own company website.

Although many sites are not intended to be gender specific, the design and layout of the webpage will quickly determine who visits and how long a user will stay on your webpage.  Is your website design agency creating a page that is appealing to all genders?  Things as subtle as colors, images and references will appeal to different genders in different ways.  If your website is promoting a product or service that applies to both genders, make sure that you website design agency is promoting your site in a way that grabs the attention of all involved.

When it comes to the World Wide Web, perhaps now more than ever before, is the fact that all nations now have access to the same web pages.  The marketing potential is no longer only nationwide, it is worldwide.  Talk to you Website design agency about making sure you page can be easily found by all who are looking for it.  Are you keeping the attention of those who find you? Take a good look at your website.  Is it showing signs that your product appeals to all nationalities?  This does not necessarily need to be in the wording. Sometimes the subtle things say more than the clear image – things such as pictures on your site.  Does your web page show images of people? If so, do these people give the impression that all nationalities can use your product or service? Are there ways to capture and keep a larger audience?  Is language a barrier on your site? Are currency conversions an option on your webpage? Do you show shipping charges to other countries?  Little things can go a long ways when telling your audience that you do cater to their needs as well.

The internet is worldwide. It is one of the first things people use in the morning and one of the last they use at night.  It is accessible by almost every personal electronic device. It is also one of the first resources used when looking for a business or company. Website design agency will work with you to make sure that your web page is attracting the audience you wanted to promote the product or service you have to offer.  They will have the skill and methods to be able to best utilize the money and time you have invested.  Your webpage is the key to gathering more attention for your company so be sure that you are doing everything you can to target and keep these customers.  Don’t fall behind in this modern day era of the internet.

Los Angeles web design experts create websites that are safe for consumers but extra care still needs to be practiced by consumers who use the internet.

Los Angeles web design companies specialize in creating websites that are as unique as the individual requesting it.  They know the best ways to reach thousands of people as new potential customers.  Along with the benefit of attracting strangers comes the risk associated with it as well.  Great care needs to be taken when creating a website to ensure that personal information is only used for its intended means.  When information is taken by the wrong person, catastrophic results can follow.  Internet security is an important part of today’s world.  As much as companies will take every precaution necessary to protect its customers and their customers, the onus is also on the website user themselves to make sure that they are not giving out information to the wrong people.

As a consumer, one of the most important things to look for when doing business transactions online is the start of the website address.  A website that starts with “http:” is a general web page and is not fully protected. It is available to the general public or by anybody that accidentally stumbles across its address.  Los Angeles web design companies will take extra precaution with sites that need to utilize personal information along with financial transactions. Websites such as these will start with “https:”or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) which provide extra security to users.  The information transmitted on these sites is encrypted, protecting the user from stolen personal data.  Never input credit card or banking information onto a webpage that does not provide this protection.

One of the most popular ways to keep in touch with friends and family has been online interaction. Social sites and forums provide easy and convenient ways to converse with others around the globe.  Los Angeles web design companies can give you direction on how to keep your information safe.  Never publicly display your name, address, birthday and image together on any webpage.  List as little about yourself as possible. By providing this information, you have given thieves everything they need for identity theft. By having your name and birthday, they are able to obtain credit reports as well as other relevant information about yourself. By also adding in your address and image, you have provided everything that is needed to locate you or impersonate you. This becomes even more relevant on social sites where users happily post information about their upcoming holidays and vacations. You have now given somebody your home address and the dates when it will be vacant.  Save that information until after you have returned from holidays and restrict how much detail you put publicly online.

Online advertising is part of the internet. After all, this is another way to generate business to your own website.  Your Los Angeles web design company can give you some fantastic ideas on how to generate more traffic to your own site by advertising on others.  However, from the consumer angle, be very careful on which links you follow.  When clicking on a link, hover your mouse over it and carefully read the URL it will be taking you too. Depending on the browser you use, it normally appears along the bottom of the page.  The actual link address is exactly where you will be going.  Be aware of links that do not seem to match the appropriate page or links that claim to be a part of the website you are on but take you to another site entirely. These types of links can leave unpleasant  information on your computer and long lasting issues.

When it comes to websites both the company and consumer need to take care that information is not sent to the wrong people.  Your Los Angeles web design company will have fantastic ways to ensure that the proper precautions are being used when designing a website. Talk to them to see that suggestions they will have for you.

The importance of having a professional’s help in creating your Los Angeles web design

In today’s world, the internet is vital in expanding your business. If you own a business in the extensive Los Angeles area, a professional Los Angeles web design is crucial for the survival of your business. While many times business owners feel that establishing a presence on the web is expensive, the reality is that it is cheaper than many other forms of advertisement, and has the capability to reach a much broader audience in the LA area.

It is possible to design your own website using templates offered by many sources, but choosing a professional to help create your Los Angeles web design is important in ensuring your website is attractive and efficient. The bad thing about a template is that millions of other websites are using the same template. Business owners need their website to be unique and to stand apart from others. It needs to be able to reach the intended market audience in ways those templates and simple web pages can not. Since many people choose to surf the web with their mobile devices, you will want to ensure that your website is viewable on these devices as well. A professional will already have the knowledge of the technicalities of building the website to be viewed on the many different browsers and social media platforms.

While the looks and functioning of your Los Angeles web design are important, it is just as critical to make sure that your website is optimized for building up your search engine ranking as much as possible by natural methods. So, it is vital that you choose a professional that offers SEO and Social Media services too. If your business is located in a large city such as Los Angeles, then this is the best way to connect with potential customers much faster. SEO services will allow your business to move up in the search engines by using popular keywords to assist those potential customers locate your website and drive much more traffic to it.

Special features, such as being able to shop on your website, book reservations, and request appointments, are essential to your Los Angeles web design. These features will allow around the clock customer service to your clients, without having to pay employees to work around the clock. This will help your business to increase sales and save money simultaneously.

Choosing a professional for your Los Angeles web design can seem overwhelming, but as long as you verify they are legitimate and encompass the characteristics listed, you will find that the job is not as difficult as imagined after all. It is important to do the research to find the best design firm for your business needs. A good Los Angeles web designer will have a portfolio available of previous websites they have created for you to review. It is equally important to compare pricing, and find a company that will be able to give you a time table for your Los Angeles design to be completed for your website launch.

The best way to ensure growth and sales increases is by making sure that your Los Angeles business is prominent on the web. We can help you achieve that with our comprehensive Los Angeles web design professionals on staff.

The pros and cons of having a professional web design versus a DIY website.

There is absolutely no doubt that if you are a small business owner, you will need a website to represent your business. The biggest question that most people seem to ponder on is regarding whether they can save their money and create their own website themselves, as opposed to spending much more money for a professional web design. It is true that do-it-yourself projects are becoming more and more popular, thanks to the unlimited amount of information and resources online, but it is not recommended that you use a DIY template website that looks like everyone else’s. If you prefer to have a unique website with all original components, then you will definitely want to consider the information below when you are trying to decide if your business will benefit more from a professional web design or a DIY web design.

What tools are available and will you be able to use them efficiently?

There are many companies out there that will offer free or fairly inexpensive templates in order to help you design your own webpage. These are usually set up with a simple interface and instructions, lending a slightly more professional look, without having to know even the basics in HTML coding. While these things can sometimes be a great asset to someone just starting out, the problems with these templates are usually the limitations that they create. Your website should be unique and offer many things that other websites may not. A professional web design will be able to open the door to creativity allowing you to show off your business without the limitations of pre-determined templates that will fit anyone.  While these templates have a huge variety of options when it comes to graphics, fonts, and colors, a professional web design will have a tailored look, specifically for your brand or business.

Will the design of your website be “trustworthy” and “work?”

The fact is that your website is the face of your business online. Choosing a DIY web design can often end up looking cheap, which in turn will make potential clients look the other way and ‘click’ to a different website. A cheap and unprofessional web design may give off the impression that your products and services are not quality either. While it sometimes seems like a lot of money up front, investing in a professional web design will increase your business, and increase your profits in the long run. You will want your potential customers to feel comfortable surfing your website and exploring the products and services you offer. It is also critical that all your links work, your site is easy to navigate and that there is a clear ‘Call to Action’ regarding your services or products. The design should be created to be appeasing to your targeted audience, not your personal taste. You must research and take the time to find out what they like if you are creating your own cookie cutter website. However, if you get a professional company, then they can do the research about your audience with know how and ease.

A professional web design will be able to optimize your website to attract your target audience. If you are ready to start attracting more of your target market audience, then you should check out our services for your business.