Web Designer Pretoria

“I Am Not A Graphic Designer, I Am an Internet Marketer and Search Engine Specialist”

First of all, I’m not a graphic designer, I’m primarily an Internet marketer and Search Engine Optimizer. I am also a small business owner and know that your website should put money into your pocket and should be an asset, not a liability.

Therefore I aim to offer you not just a website, I hope to give you something that will bring your business a continues flow of new prospects as well as a means of communicating with your existing clients by offering you a complete solution to establishing your presence on the Internet.

If your website is not an asset, i.e. if it does not put money in your pocket, then there is no need to have one because it will only cost you money.

I so often see websites that have cost their owners tens of thousands of Rands and they truly look beautiful, but they do not deliver because they were designed by graphic designers and programmers.

If you are a small business owner or want to generate income online, then you need a website with an eye on the marketing ball.

Although I am a web designer in Pertoria, I do work for clients from all over the world.

The following is the basis for my design process and my starting point when I develop a website for you.

The first thing I do when I start a project is to determine if there is a demand for the product or service on the Internet. This is done through a simple marketing research exercise where I calculate demand and supply for your service or product on the Internet.

How do I do it? I simply use some online tools that show me how many searches were done on the Internet for a particular product by doing “keyword research and analysis”.

Let me explain : People are not necessarily familiar with your company name and it’s products and services. People want to solve a “problem” and they are looking for solutions.

An example : A Canadian business man is planning a first time visit to South Africa. He wants to go on a safari in the Kruger National Park whilst he is here. So he sits behind his desk in Canada and what does he do? He types in one of the popular search engines such as Google something like “kruger park safari” or “kruger park tour”.

Now you are “Joe’s Tours and Safaris” and your website’s pages have been filled with information about “Joe’s Tours and Safari’s”. With a bit of research and analysis you will find that Joe would do better to optimise his website for “kruger park safari” because our Canadian friend has never even heard of Joe’s Tours and Safaris.

I find it daily where people are trying to attract a market and they do not have the actual keyword phrase that their market uses to search, appearing even ONCE on their website!

If Joe’s Tour’s and Safaris do not have the actual keyword phrase “kruger park safari” appearing in that exact same combination on his website at least once, the search engines will not index him for this phrase and Joe will die a slow Internet death…

85% – 95% of your website traffic is going to come from searches done on search engines for particular phrases or keywords. The trick is to identify those keywords and then optimise your website for those keywords most likely to succeed on the Net. The chances that our Canadian visitor is going to type in a search engine “Joe’s Tours and Safaris” is unlikely unless he is already familiar with Joe’s company or brand brand name.

This is what I do. This is where I differ from other website designers. Most of them tend to focus on layout and design and functionality of the website itself instead of making sure that the website is relevant to what is actually being searched for on the Internet and is most likely to attract visitors.

They design websites in frames which is wonderful for the functionality of the website, but a big NO for the search engines. And now you have this beautiful website but none one can find it because the search engines cannot index it.

Which would you rather have? A beautiful website that you can show to your friends and drool over sitting behind your PC, or one that actually works and generates sales and enquiries?

And once the visitor is there they amaze them with the clever animations, beautiful layout and design and then give them little to no text and information. What most Internet users are using the Net for in the first place is “information”. They don’t call it the “Information highway” for nothing….

Once I have identified those keywords and analysed the competition, I give structure to the website i.t.o the number of pages and what we are going to present to the market.

THEN only do I start worrying about design and layout etc.

I like websites lean and mean and simple. Not out of personal taste but because that’s the way search engines and visitors like them. Search engines use amongst other things the body text of your website.

The more pictures, animations and fancy graphic plug ins you have on a page the larger the page, the more the search engine has to “digest” and if all this “digestion” is being taken up by coding and pictures, then it’s not going to index you properly and you are going to receive very bad listings.

Visitors also like simple web pages where graphics and plug ins don’t take ages to download and they can get to the Information they are looking for easily and quickly.

Web Designer Pretoria Design Process

Once I have drafted a design I optimise each and every page for a particular search phrase related to the product / service based on actual Internet searches as recorded by the search engines. This is done by inserting and using the relevant phrase in the body text of the website, in the meta tags and in the actual coding of the website.

I also design the website in an Open Source (free) Content Management System (CMS) known as wordpress, as this will form the basis for future upgrades as it allows your website to be easily upgraded and added onto later as your website grows. It also allows for more scripting functionality with dynamic components and best of all you can edit and update your website yourself from a very user friendly interface.

Although I am a web designer based in Pretoria, via the wonder of email and the Internet you can just send me what you want done and I do it remotely for you.

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