Making a living online is a difficult thing to do and it’s something that 98% of businesses that are currently online are not successful at. There are a lot of reasons for this and those reasons increase when websites leave the US.

To start with websites outside the US do not have as many people purchasing items online and for this reason the marketing and the website design have to be much better than those in the US.

A website needs to build trust, guide the visitor in the direction we want them to go and help them to make the purchase.

A major problem in any country is finding a web designer that understands marketing, web design, graphic design, programming and most of all conversion.

Let’s take a look at asicamericas.com.

The website was designed for smaller browsers which are rarely used today and what makes it worse is that the design is not centered. It hangs in the top left corner of the screen like it’s scared to be seen.

Every time someone is forced to click the mouse to find information there will be a percent of visitors that will leave the site never to return. By not having contact information on every page of the site we force visitors to click links and hunt for information.

If it’s a real business then the phone number and contact information should be in the header of every page. And the header and design of the site should tell me something about the business before I ever read the first line of text.

You’ve got less than 3 seconds to get me interested in your product and this is done on the graphical side of the website.
And colors will affect my reaction and the action I will take on your site.

Red indicates anger. It’s a strong color that conjures up a range of seemingly conflicting emotions from passionate love to violence and warfare. Red can have a physical effect, increasing the rate of respiration and raising blood pressure.

Blue would have been a better color to use. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven.

Blue is considered beneficial to the mind and body. It slows human metabolism and produces a calming effect.
Another problem with the site is the scrolling text; it causes your eyes to be pulled in that direction and forces us to read the information at the speed the website decides.

The website has no call to action and in no way tries to get me to purchase any type of product.

On the SEO side of things the website has less than 8 links pointing to it and not meta tags. Meta tags are used by search engines like MSN who will be spending $100 million on advertising their search engine. By ranking on their search engine you get some of the benefit of the 100 million they are spending.

Java script and other coding was left on the site, it should have been pulled out of the code and placed in external folders to make it easier for the search engines to read and understand the site.

It doesn’t take long to come to the conclusion that this site has never made money online.

Web design is more than just art; you have to have the artistic side along with the ability to guide your site visitor in the direction you want them to go.

The use of colors, fonts, and other things used to guide the site visitor can me learned. However, the artistic side is a gift given by God.

We often look at art, photos, shapes and much more to get ideas on the artistic side of the site.

There are those artists that look to others to be inspired and then there are those that inspire others.

Adam Hughes is one of those that inspire others.

In 1987, Hughes penciled two short stories and the first issue of the character Death Hawk, created by Mark Ellis. In 1988 Hughes’ work appeared in Comico’s Maze Agency with co-creator/writer Mike W. Barr, and stayed on the book for one year. When Maze Agency was canceled by Comico, DC Comics offered him a job on Justice League America. He did both covers and internal renditions on that series for two years, before switching to providing covers only.

You can check out his work in two places: DeviantART profile and his personal website.

To make the most out of a unique website design, you have to provide your designers with the information that they will need to understand your business. Thus armed, they can begin work on your new site with an eye to not only making it stand out, but also emphasizing your strongest suits and making those stick in your customers’ minds. But what are you supposed to look for in a unique website? What features and functions will serve best to not only enhance your site, but also build your brand?

The site’s appearance is going to be important, in large part because this will begin to establish the appearance of your brand. A logo might be the most important detail, but consider other images and colors that represent your business. Remember, you’re going to want to use these things for more than just your website, so the better they look and the more cohesively they fit together, the better. Consider asking for vector images, as these can be easily resized to fit anything from a business card to a website to a billboard. And while your graphics and colors should represent your business, they should also communicate its value. Remember that images and colors are often interpreted symbolically, perhaps on a subconscious level. So you want your designer to provide you with symbols of those things that your business provides: quality, service, affordability, or whatever other edge you have over your competitors.

The layout, navigation, and functionality of the site can also have an impact. Areas of your site that draw the most attention are going to be the most likely visited. A potential customer is not going to read through your entire website, thoughtfully digest the information, compare it with the next ten sites on whatever search engine it is using, and then make a fully informed, perfectly rational decision about which company to choose. If you’re lucky, it might skim the text on your home page, and quickly look around for key features or advantages that it feels are most useful or important. Your web designer should set up your layout and navigation scheme so that a customer can quickly determine the key reasons for choosing you.

But this does not mean you should ignore text entirely. A website is a repository of information, and unique websites are no exception. Not only is text content important to the search engines, but an interested visitor is likely to read (or at least skim) information you provide on whichever product, service, or feature attracted its attention in the first place. Even if you have a title and header and big flashy banner saying that you offer excellent customer service, for example, you need to provide a bit of information (policies, testimonials, etc) to back it up.

Creating a unique website design requires input from the business owner as well as creativity on the part of the designers. Once you have provided the information, you should expect results that not only make your website stand out visually, but that also emphasize the greatest advantages of choosing your business over your competitors. If you provide your designers with the information they need, and the freedom to mold that into the perfect website for your business, a unique website design will be what you get.

Copyright © 2008 Dustin Schwerman.

Dustin Schwerman is the primary web designer at Truly Unique – Small Business Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in impressive, custom sites designed to capture the essence of the businesses they represent, as well as creating useful web-based programs to improve and simplify some of the tasks of running a business. Their goal is to provide these services at affordable, pragmatic rates based on effort involved, rather than arbitrary costs based on number of pages or hours. Truly Unique works on sites of all varieties, from office supply to awards and trophies.

I did an article a while back about colors and how they can affect our emotions. I found it fascinating that colors can create desires in us without us even knowing it.

But did you know pictures do the same thing?

In two studies, young Dutch children share more candy with others after being primed with attributes of Saint Nicholas compared to being primed with a dwarf in the control condition. In a third study, children evaluate sharing more positively after being primed with attributes of Saint Nicholas, and more negatively after being primed with the Toys R Us logo, compared to being primed with a dwarf.

If you didn’t understand all that I’ll try and clear it up a bit.

Kids wanted to share when they were shown a picture of Saint Nicholas and didn’t want to share when shown the Toy R Us logo.

Just like when picking colors, we need to pay attention when picking images for our website.

Images on your site will create a desire when the site visitor sees them, you need to make sure they create the desire your website desires.

In the past years one of the hardest things to find has been inspirantional church web designs. However, it seems that Churches are finely stepping up and for that reason I’ve decided to show a couple good Church web designs.

The use of colors, graphics and images cause these Church web sites to stand out from the past Church web designs.