What to Look for in a Web Designer

Whether you’re a blogger or a business owner, having a great website design that people love is likely to feature high on your priority list. Sometimes, you might feel that designing a website can’t actually be very difficult, and start trying to put something together yourself. However, most of the time we find that it is actually something that is best left to the professionals, and so we start to look for a web design expert.

Although many of us will know of or be friends with a web designer, others won’t be so lucky, and will need to find one in order to get their website looking how they wish. Ultimately, you’re probably not going to know what a web designer is about until you work with them. However, there are a number of things you can look for, and ask questions around, which will help you to find the best web designer for your site.

Are They a Listener?

There are two types of web designer. There is the designer who listens intently to your requirements than gives suggestions based on what you want, and there is the designer who doesn't listen and tells you what they can, and will, do.

Obviously, you want the designer who is going to do as you ask, rather than the one who will assume you want their own favorite design and please themselves.

What Matters to Them?

We can probably split this issue into two parts, too. Some web designers are all about the appearance of a website; a site that looks great overrules everything else in their eyes.

The better designers, while concerned with appearance (it does matter, after all!), place far more importance on how well your website performs, and the user experience it provides. If you want to find the answer to this question without asking a designer directly, just ask for some examples of websites they have recently worked on.

Are they a pleasure to browse and easy to navigate, or are they a nightmare of links and clunky design that leaves you reaching for the close button?

Do They Know Your Industry?

It is easy to take the approach that web design is web design, and that the industry is irrelevant. However, what works on an automotive site isn't going to work on an ecommerce site selling clothes, which similarly won’t be useful on a site discussing medical conditions.

Look for a designer with a track record in your industry, and you’ll find you achieve your objectives much quicker.

Have They Embraced Industry Trends?

The internet is filled with articles that talk about the latest design trends and developments, and you should make sure you're familiar with them. Obviously, you aren't going to ask the yes or no question, because they'll always answer in the affirmative. Instead, ask them about their favorite design features and initiatives that they're currently working with, and see how they stack up against what you've read.

Search for these traits whenever you’re looking for a web designer, and you’ll find that you get the website you want in no time at all. Failure to check will increase the likelihood of you having a bad design experience, and having to spend more money to put it right.

Responsive Web Designing And SEO

The world is going mobile, particularly for connectivity. Smart phones and other mobile devices are becoming the popular way to access the needed information over the World Wide Web. The trend of using mobile devices to make search online is increasing day by day. It has also been stated that mobile searches will take the lead in coming years than the desktop or laptop searches.

This piece of writing will reveal some useful stuff related to responsive web designing, the best option to meet the mobile search needs, and the activities required for mobile SEO.

Responsive Web Designing And Google

Before Google recommended mobile websites to appear in the search results, the ideas about mobile SEO were there in the air. What does Google say about mobile-compatible websites? Here are given the conditions:

• Use different design at an alternate page as mobile version while ensuring their responsiveness for the mobile devices. CSS  3 media queries should be used for a mobile-friendly web design.
• Use a different sub-domain for the mobile version of a website.
• The HTML output should be different as per device used by the user whether it’s desktop or Smartphone.

For having a separate domain to cater to the needs of mobile-based searchers, the users are redirected to the mobile web version. However, it involves some complicated things to do like switchboard tags addition and robots.txt usage to facilitate Google in the right redirection. These additions aren't needed when a website is designed responsively.

Responsive Web Designing: The Better Solution

In the web design industry, responsive web designing is the hottest topic. Big brands are considering the responsive web designing seriously to make their websites easy to access on the mobile devices and Smartphones. These designs are created without compromising the content, it’s kept the same for all platforms.

Advantages Of Responsive Web Designing

Here are given some edges that web designers and developers may have while creating websites responsively.

It’s easy and takes less time

Responsive web designing involves less time to develop to meet the mobile web needs as CSS3 media queries are used in these websites. There is no need to create a complete website for the mobile platform, just the content is resized to appear on the smaller screens for the mobile-based searchers.

Content management is simpler

With many websites of the same business, you may have to manage the content separately. With just one website that is a responsive website, you will have to manage the content of that site only. It’s less time consuming, less hectic, and is easier-to-do task.

Page authority for one website

As responsive website serves the mobile and desktop users, so the page authority is established just for one website. If there is a separate domain for the mobile devices and carries the term "related," the authority would be the same and backlinks would be there to support. However, one page for all devices is the simplest and better option not just for the designers, but also for the SEO pros.

Google’s recommendation is there

After having unambiguous Google’s recommendation about responsive web designing, it should be clear that these websites would be ranked just like normal websites. In actual, Google prefer websites to be responsive in order to cater to the needs of both desktop and Smartphone users.

Responsive Websites And SEO: What To Consider?

Some major considerations of mobile SEO, related to responsive web designing, are given here to enhance your knowledge.

Go local

According to surveys, mobile-based searches for restaurants are increasing day-by-day, and it’s closer to desktop searches. It’s important to know the facts. The desktop searches are on rise when people search from home and mobile searches are more when people are outside. After looking at that situation, going local is the best option to hit the local target audience and to get the desired response. Like, you can target web design, before you go globally, to get quicker ranks not just for mobile-based searches, but also for desktop searches because that’s what Google consider now.

Keyword selection: go for shorter ones

On mobile devices, people prefer typing shorter keywords because of the small screens, so for local optimization, the shorter keywords should be selected. It will help in seeing your website quite often in the mobile-based search results.

Another approach is to consider Google’s recommendations about keywords because users prefer hitting the recommended option if it’s closer to their search, instead of typing the whole keyword. Adwords Keyword Tool of Google is there for your help.

Use mobile analytics

You can check how many visits are made from mobile devices by using Web Analytics of Mobile section. By trying out different keywords, you can analyse which keywords are traffic-friendly and which aren’t. Even a hasty look can reveal some great ideas to improve the mobile web optimization.

Consider the target audience at first

The main objective of mobile strategy is to help the users in finding the relevant information with great ease. Heavy graphics and forced zooming-in should be avoided at a responsive website.

Users, whether of desktops or Smartphones, want websites quick to load on their screens, so that should be given due consideration while designing websites.

A website having rich information and excellent design is attractive not just for the visitors, but also to get the quality links. Responsive web design isn’t just good for the users, but for the Google crawlers to track that. Hence, it makes sense that a website should have similar pages for the desktop users as well as for the mobile users.

Responsive websites, local SEO, shorter keywords, and making use of Google mobile web analytics are the things needed for result-driven mobile SEO. Are you considering all these or any other added factors while performing SEO for your mobile or responsive websites? Share your views in the comments below.