Webinar Recap: Top Website Design Trends 2011

We just finished our webinar on what we think the top website design trends for 2011 will be, and hopefully you all found it useful and informative.

As usual, here’s the recap from the webinar for those of you who didn’t get your questions answered because we ran out of time, and for everyone who couldn’t make it today.

1. What is more important: website design or SEO? Both of these web tools are extremely important, and they should work together to help your website reach its optimal ROI. If you have a beautiful website, but it doesn’t get found online, then it’s not effective. If you have a website that gets found, but is visually unappealing, then it won’t be as useful as it could be. What you need to do is design a website that supports your SEO goals and vice versa to ensure that your website is attractive to visitors and helps you achieve your traffic targets.
2. Where does a CMS fit into a website redesign? A content management system (CMS) is, in our opinion, an essential part of a redesign. If your organization doesn’t currently have a CMS, then we suggest implementing one during the redesign process, and if you are already using one, then you need to make sure your new website is built in such a way that it complements the capabilities of your CMS. Your CMS is meant to help make your website management and updates easier, and if your website isn’t designed to be used easily with your CMS, then you’re not doing yourself any favors. 
3. What aspect of a website design do you give the most priority to? Usability. At Marqui our website redesign process has a huge focus on website usability requirements. While eye-catching design is a good way to draw your target audience in, if your visitors find your site difficult to use, then your design won’t matter because they will get frustrated and click away to a site that meets their requirements more quickly and easily. 
4. How do I figure out the best website trend for my organization? Every website has different goal and different requirements. Establishing what the needs of your organization are will help you to determine which website trends will help you meet them. For instance, if you have a website with lots of content that you’d like to highlight and get on your homepage, then an editorial-style (grid) layout may be for you, because it allows space for a great deal of content that is updated frequently.
5. We are creating a new website but working with a separate SEO company, separate designer and separate website development company, any tips? Normally, this is one of the things we warn against when a company is starting a redesign, because there is so much room for poor communication between the different elements. Our best recommendation is to make sure that all of the different companies your working with are communicating with each other, and make sure that your own marketing department is aware of the progress to make sure that every aspect of your redesign is working to meet your online goals.
6. Can you elaborate how using typography can help with your SEO?  In the past to get attractive fonts many organizations used images for text which was bad for SEO because search engines couldn't read the text within the image. Using typography as a design element, and using newer techniques like SiFR and Cufon, as well as tools like HTML5 can give you text that is both visually appealing, communicates your message, improves website usability AND is readable by search engines.
7. Can you give us an example of a website in higher education with a mega menu? Two education sites that have nice examples of mega menus are BCIT and University of Southern California's School of Pharmacy

Posted by Amberlie Denny at November 30, 2010 10:30 AM

Comments

Andy

Webtools are quite important to develop a site its prominent from the blog its a great blog.

Web Design Delhi

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