Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Web Design Importance for Businesses

By Michelle Ming


The World Wide Web has been frequently used as a means for individuals and businesses to find, discuss, and distribute information. Businesses are able to increase exposure to their products and services via as well as optimizing the search engine results from Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Businesses in today's society have to do more than provide low prices, superior customer service, and business results. Companies are not only competing against each other for business, they are also competing against consumers' time and patience. Consumers have so much going on in their lives, that many don't have the time to call customer service for assistance. Consumers take many business transaction matters into their own hands and go online to complete their needs. Businesses have answered to these consumers and provided options and rewards to those who conduct all transactions online.

A mobile website allows a travelling businessman to take care of his accounts while in the midst of meetings, conferences, and flights. Your company's user-friendly and self-explanatory website design showed the stay-at-home mom how easy it was to manager her business with you, while watching the baby, paying the bills, and getting dinner ready for the family. Consumers don't have time to wait for pages to load. They want websites that are informational, effective, and provide a variety of options to quickly log in and out, while still taking care of their business needs. Consumers utilize search bars and sitemaps to quickly locate what they're looking for, to preserve what precious time they have during the day. They want shopping carts that can save their selections for a later time and date when they have the time to update the products and services they wish to purchase, without having to start all over. With the growing need for consumers to self-service, businesses have awarded incentives to those who prefer to order, service, and cancel their products online.

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 utilize various tactics to encompass as many consumers in as many ways possible, thereby ensuring their marketing potential is maximized. By incorporating outbound email capabilities, businesses have found email marketing to be highly effective. Options for email marketing range from the "refer a friend" method to clients requesting additional information directly from their websites. By utilizing marketing mailing, businesses gain the advantage of reaching consumers and marketing their products, at the convenience of consumers. Many businesses take full advantage of how easy and powerful online marketing really is. They offer rebates and discounts for conducting business online, which optimizes both their productivity and business results.

Business owners need to get creative when it comes to consumer demands. They need to create a website that is not only effective, but interactive and also encourages self-servicing. an growing number of websites now offer technical support in multiple forms and have maintained the sites as to not slow down with increased access and usage. Websites also have "frequently asked questions" that list questions and answers for common scenarios, as to eliminate a certain volume of assistance needed. Companies are therefore able to allocate time and resources elsewhere, to allow for more efficient operation. Business owners in today's society recognize the importance of redesigning websites and systems to provide worldwide around the clock access to an easy and efficient website.

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