Recently we were asked to quote on a website for a dentist, just across town from our Perth web design studio. Now this dentist already had a website which was ranking extremely well. In addition, the design of the website had been professionally put together. But despite being in the top five listings and attracting a significant amount of traffic, the amount of new business generated from the website was meagre.
I had a sense, very quickly as to what the problem was but needed to do further research to confirm. For more details go to www.10-website-programming-tricks.com. Through my research, I discovered that my client was not alone in his industry with the overwhelming theme for dental websites being one of cheesy smiles from all ages and flashy changing graphics.
From my point of view, many of the dentist websites simply came across as fake and full of stock photography. They left me feeling worried that if I went to see that dentist that I was dealing with somebody who was all about marketing and may not be the best dentist around ? OUCH!.
The real underlying issue here is trust, or more to the point ? a lack of it. You must understand that when you design a website you must make sure that you do everything you can to generate the maximum amount of trust from your prospective customers.
If the website generates trust, then it will give the customer the confidence required to commit to making a buying decision (In this instance ? making an appointment). Now, what had gone wrong is that the web developers had focused more on trying to get across the fact that this dentist was technologically advanced by putting together a flashy website. More flash = more impressive: WRONG!. What the end result was, however, is that the website completely undermined trust in his services, because it gave the impression of an over sell and in the medical profession this is a definite no-no.
Interestingly, to back up this suspicion the dentist then told me a story about someone who was referred to him by a patient. "Go and see my dentist because he is excellent" was the referral from the existing patient. But before acting on the referral, the prospective patient, checked out the dentist's website, which prompted him to ask his friend. "Are you sure about this guy?".
What had happened is that the website had undermined the trust that had been set up by the friend of referral. You can also visit us at www.29web-design-tricks.com. Fortunately, in this instance, he had checked with his friend who told him to forget about the website and go and see the dentist. But how many other referrals were scared off by a website that appeared to oversell the person or service?
The lesson here is to make sure that when you are designing a website that you take into consideration, your specific target markets expectations about your industry and design to the psychology of that market and its expectations. Medical professionals should definitely not try to oversell themselves and be aware that an overuse of flash and stock photography can undermine trust and be detrimental to your business.
We subsequently found out that the client's wife had hated his web site. Maybe next time he will listen to her.
Web sites have been in existence for more than a decade and the idea of web design has changed considerably during the years. In the nineties, you could find web pages with web design as simple as text for its entire body with a graphic or two strewn here and there. Such web design was perfectly acceptable then and frequently relied only on tools as simple as notepad to create. Nowadays, most web sites require considerably more advanced web design, often calling for entire teams of web content creators to make them. If you're new to the field of creating web sites, how do you learn to make web sites that you would truly like to visit?
First of all, you need to visit many web sites and be critical of them. Ask yourself what elements of their web design impressed you? What elements of their web design did not seem too functional or were just plain ugly? By knowing what it is that you want, you could be taking the first steps to becoming a really good web master.
Next, you just need to learn the basics. Much of web design coding during the nineties for these web sites still function as the basics for these new more colorful web sites. Yes, web design still relies on good old HTML. Visit any tutorial online and after an afternoon, you're sure to be acquainted enough with HTML to make your own site, albeit a very simple one.
Now, with this knowledge of the basics of HTML, you can revisit your favorite web sites and see how it is that they were created. Use the browser's ability to see the coding for these sites and you'll find out what web design tricks they employed. Did the site use fancy moving graphics that responded to your mouse's clicks? Then it might just have used flash in its web design. Did it have music embedded into it as mp3? Then find out just how the web master did this using your browser's view layout feature. Any of the best web sites' web design tools are always just there, ready for you to see how they were put to use.
After this, the next step would be to emulate the sites' features. It's not too difficult as you can just copy anything using copy and paste. Place these codes into the site you're trying to create. Don't be greedy and copy every feature from every site all at once. You need to start small with one feature at a time. That way, if a feature does not work, you'll know just where the problem is.
It's not all about using the web design features, though. You should only use web features that are useful for your sites' purposes. Are you building a site only for yourself? Then try to have web design that expresses your self. Are you building a site for your families' company? Then maybe you could keep it simple and straight to the point, just giving the company's details. After uploading your web site, give yourself a couple of days rest and look back at it. That way, you'll have a fresh take on your own web design; good luck.
Both Deepak Rana & Mahoney are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.