Monday, August 25, 2008

Web Design Importance for Businesses

By Michelle Ming


Businesses and individuals both use the World Wide Web as a means to find, discuss, and distribute information. Using search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo, businesses are able to increase the exposure to their products and services while also enhancing their websites' search engine results. Corporations are constantly competing for consumers' business, advertising their low prices, superior customer service, and business results. Today's consumers have too many tasks needing completion, to be calling customer service for assistance. Today's consumers turn to the internet to self-service a lot of their business needs, and corporations have answered those needs by providing additional options and awarding the members who complete business transactions online.

To a travelling businessman, an easy to access mobile website makes his daily schedule of meetings, conferences, and flights a lot more manageable. To the stay-at-home mom who is trying to pay bills while the kids are screaming in the background and dinner is boiling over on the stove, a user-friendly and self-explanatory website design could be the reason why she brought her business over to your company. Consumers what websites that load quickly, are informational, and effectively convey their message. They want to login, take care of the business at hand, and log out. They want a search bar and a site map so they can go directly to the page they need, and not waste time searching for a hyperlink. Consumers want a shopping cart they can view, edit, and easily checkout from, when ordering products and services. Businesses recognize the demands of today's consumers and a growing number of websites provide consumers self-service capabilities, from ordering to cancelling their products and services.

The level of quality and efficiency of service that consumers hold businesses to has been steadily increasing over time. They expect technological advances to provide better, faster, easier methods for conducting account maintenance transactions from anywhere in the world. Due to these demands, businesses have sought ways to provide more cost-effective and streamlined servicing. Business owners have sought methods to ensure their websites are easy to understand and contain quality information which aids in promoting consumer self-servicing. There has been an increased need to constantly maintain and redesign websites to accommodate for such growth and demands. However, the quantity of available methods for account maintenance is insignificant, if the quality of servicing and business websites is insufficient. Despite the world being wrapped up in technological advances and conveniences, consumers have not forgotten the importance of quality service and products.

Business owners ensure their products and services encompass as many consumers in as many different ways possible, by encompassing a variety of marketing tactics. Many businesses have given the consumer the option to self email marketing materials from the websites, and some have even seen a significant increase to their marketing database by means of a "refer a friend" option that existing clientele can utilize. By marketing to consumers via email, business owners have the advantage of reaching consumers when it is convenient for them to view what your company has to offer. With the power and ease of online marketing, businesses have started offering discounts and rebates to their members for conducting transactions online. Many have encompassed a greater variety of web-based marketing strategies to optimize productivity and business results.

With all the demands of the consumer, business owners truly need to be creative and put their thinking caps on when it comes to website design. They need to create an effective and interactive website that encourages not only consumer self-service capabilities, but doesn't slow down with increased access and usage. An increasing number of websites now offer online troubleshooting support for consumers in both chat and forum-based systems. Websites also often have a "frequently asked questions" page, which provides problems and solutions to some of the most common scenarios. By posting a list of these questions and answers, the volume of assistance needed is greatly reduced. This allows the company to allocate that time and resources elsewhere for a more efficient operation. The business owners in this modern era have recognized the necessary changes of redesigning their websites and systems to provide an easy, efficient, and excellent method of providing quality care and assistance to their consumers, both around the clock and worldwide.

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