There is more to a professional website design than just some pretty images; yes it goes way beyond just the look. It’s a combination of several things put together in hopes of creating the right mood that will cause a website visitor to become a website customer.

And I personally believe that it’s the job of the web designer to create that mood and make sure it flows throughout the site. Other words, if the client wants to add text or something else to the site, that will interrupt the flow of the site, the web designer should offer an alternative or explain to the client that it will break the flow of the site and could cause the sites conversion to not be as good as it could be.

A website design is a lot like creating a package for a product. A good package should grab your attention, tell about the product and get you to purchase that product.

When someone is creating the packaging for a product I am pretty sure they don’t just make it look pretty and allow the client to through some text on it and call it done.

While I’ve never created packaging for a product I’d think there is a lot of hand holding and communication back and forth between the client and the company creating the packaging. I’d even go so far as to say that the package creator’s reputation stands on the success of that package.

So why should a web design be any different?

Web Designs

I spent a couple hours talking with a potential client the other day only to find out that she wanted a website but didn’t have any money. Just like any other business owner this isn’t the type of person I want to spend the day talking with.

However, instead of cutting them off and going on with my work day I’ve learnt that I can turn them into future clients. My job is building and designing websites that make money as well as doing SEO. Those two things combined can help anyone make a living online.

And the neat thing is that there are enough free resources out there that all I have to do is point them in the right direction. My plan is to take a little time and write some articles, post them on a site and hopefully help people who are currently unable to make a living online learn how.

I want all my clients to make money online but I also want everyone I run across to do the same. If you are making money then I am making money.

I am hoping to get started my new site started this week and I’ll post a link here once I get it going.

I spend most my days talking to potential clients on the telephone and through e-mails. And I love my job, I love what I do and I love the fact that I am pretty damn good at it.

However, there is one question I should ask clients that I never do.

What makes you different from your competition?

What are 25 interesting things about your business that would make me want to do business with you?

When it comes to making a living online, you will be competing against a lot of people. You need to know why someone should do business with you instead of your competition.

For example, when I started my business I did not look for what unique abilities we brought to the table. However over the years I slowly began to standout from the crowd.

Let’s see if I can name 25 things that make my Web Design business unique.

1. I am one of the only Web design companies that offer unlimited design changes. I do not limit the number of changes a customer needs to make to the design to get exactly what he or she is looking for.

My goal is to make the customer happy. We do this by not limiting are charging more after a certain number design changes.

2. I’ve got people here 7 days a week 15 hours a day to answer the telephone. We try to answer all business e-mails within one hour.

3. We’ve got people whose only job is studying and understanding conversion. This means that when it comes to building websites to convert traffic were on top of the game.

4. We have designers that do nothing but design and programmers who do nothing but program. And this allows them to be on top of their game.

5. We offer a 100% Money Back Guarantee. At any point in the process the customer can get their money back. This means we have to work extra hard to keep the customer happy.

6. We do our best to be efficient in what we do. This allows us to get the websites back to the customers in a timely manner and allows us to keep our prices low.

7. We not only understand how the search engines work, but we rank for some of the most competitive keywords in the industry.

8. I’ve got no problem giving away free information or trying to help someone make money online. Whether it profits me or not.

Their posts all over the Internet that I have written giving free advice on what works and does not work online.

9. We practice what we preach. Unlike most Web design companies, we make our total living with our website we do NO off-line advertising of any kind.

10. We’ve been building and designing websites for the last eight years and have been able to make our total living online throughout that time. This gives us knowledge and understanding of the Internet and the Web design industry that most people do not have.

11. Our desire is to make our clients happy. We don’t care how many hours on the phone it takes, how many e-mails we have to send, or how many design changes are needed. It’s all about and for the client.

If you don’t know what makes your business unique and different from your competition maybe you should take a minute and try and come up with something.

Landing Page Designs

I’ve spent the better part of eight years studying and trying to understand landing pages. The landing page is the first point of contact between yourself and a potential client. It doesn’t matter how good your product is, how good of a salesman you are or how much money you’ve spent trying to get someone to your site, if the landing page doesn’t do its job then nothing else will matter.

Your landing page has to have a call-to-action, answer the visitor’s questions and build trust in less than 3 seconds.

I’ve seen a lot of different types of landing pages and I’ve tested a lot of different ones and the ones that seem to work the best are the ones with a strong call to action.

Don’t get me wrong, there is no cookie cutter landing page. The landing page that will work best for your site depends on the type of user you are trying to sale to. Trying to sale to a 17 year old kid is a lot different than trying to sale to a 45 year old man.

It’s this reason that if I was going to build a site with a product for older family guys it would look totally different from a site where I was trying to sale products to teenagers. Of course the sex of the person also plays a major role in the look and feel of the site.

There is no such thing as a cookie cutter landing page, it all depends on the person you are trying to sale to.

The recession is over yet 450,000 jobs were lost in the month of June, after the recession had ended.

I’ve seen a lot of my competition begin to struggle and many others go out of business. Yet prices across the board for web design services have remained intact. The recession caused people to tighten their grip on their wallets and useless products are no longer being purchased.

People are now thinking about how they spend their money and many are starting to pay off credit debt. If nothing else we’ve learned that nothing in life is for sure, including your job or the faith of the company you work for.

Companies have now started calling outsourcing, Cloud Commuting and it is being looked on as a good thing. It’s one of the things that have kept many companies in business and allowed them to keep prices low and keep current employees.

Geeks on Steroids has been busy this year helping many companies improve their web presence and turn old websites into money making machines. Source that have not been considered in the past are being considered today.

The difficult times are far from over but the companies that see this as an opportunity to change the way they do business will remain in business and continue to grow.