Your SBI Website Design – Is it important?

Is the look and feel of your  SBI Website Design all that important?

One of the biggest criticisms we read and hear about SBI Websites is, that they all look the same and they are ugly. A statement which is probably true of most sites using a system that provides ten year old templates or where SBI Owners setup their site five to ten years ago and haven’t felt the need to update it.

Here’s the professional Web Designers viewpoint …

Anyone can tackle web design. That statement may be true but, before you decide to do it yourself, consider carefully the objective. Don’t forget, its results that count, particularly in a business environment.

Wikipedia describes website design as “…the skill of creating presentations of content (usually hypertext or hypermedia) that is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web…”

For website designers, the word ‘skill’ is highly significant – in fact, a whole range of skills are needed; skills that involve both the aesthetics and the mechanics of a website’s operation.

Any enthusiasts who think that they can make do with the latest ‘build a website’ software are going to be at a disadvantage, compared to businesses with custom designed, unique websites that have been professionally developed specifically for them.

Professional website designers develop an understanding of a client’s brand objectives and design a site to enhance that brand. They then get to work on building the website, using their expertise to implement technologies that will ensure the site operates smoothly and visitors have no navigation problems.

The content is carefully planned, the text accurately and effectively drafted, and appropriate graphics are identified. There are so many factors that need to be taken into consideration: relevance; brevity; accuracy of spelling, grammar and punctuation; consistency; the incorporation of keywords to aid search engine optimisation; effective presentation, including the use of suitable fonts and provision of adequate white space; possible use of special effects, such as animation; accessibility and compliance with W3C standards – the list goes on and on.

The above only refer to what visitors to the website will see. Equally important is the source code that sits behind each web page, developed by using such mark-up languages as HTML, XHTML and CSS – all part of web design.

Once accessible on the World Wide Web, the website will act as your shop window to the World – an important means by which prospective customers will be able to see what you can offer, 24/7. Good web design is crucial if you are to gain increased business via the internet.

Don’t leave the success of your website to chance; it pays to leave web design to the professionals.

As always, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and whether your DIY SBI Website Design looks better than something constructed and SEO’d by a professional website designer, can only be judged by how many visitors use it.

It’s true that SBI websites designed using the basic template structure, like the site on the left, aren’t that aesthetically pleasing, but take a look at the traffic stats and the quality of the content and perhaps it’ll tell us why the owner has never felt the need to gloss it up or add all those wonderfully modern Web2.0 features.

And; that isn’t to say that you can’t add all those wonderfully modern Web2.0 features.
The Allen Brigg Carpets site pictured above right, is an SBI website, and any SBI Owner can build a similar site using the new 2 and 3 column CSS driven templates included with Sitebuild-It.

So, is your SBI Website Design important …

Well it all comes down to the quality of your content not your $1000 graphics. You see unique quality content speaks for itself and will shine through any ugly website design, just like the lack of content, bad grammar and incorrect spelling will never be hidden by the flashiest most perfectly optimized website design.

Leave your content creation to some profit driven web design professional who’s on the clock and you leave out the most important parts of your content … Passion and a real interest in your subject.

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