6 Things You Probably Didn’t Know Your Web Designer Can Help You With

At Hidden Depth we just happen to use graphic design and web coding to create websites but if websites did not exist we would still be designers, creating systems, managing projects, producing designs that help appeal to a brand’s customers or make things easier to understand. There are actually quite a few things a web designer can help you with outside of general design.

The best thing you can do is ask your designer if you’re not sure if that’s in their skill set. In most cases, they can help with what you need. Take their advice and you’ll have a site that not only looks good, but functions smoothly as well.

1. Reliable Web Hosting

It doesn’t matter how perfect of a website you have, your web host could ruin everything if it’s not fast, reliable and secure. Since page load speed is one of the factors used in search engine rankings by Google, you need to make sure you don’t just select web hosting on price alone. You don’t have to figure out hosting all on your own. Your web designer knows what features you need in a hosting platform to provide your visitors with the best possible experience. Some web designers even offer their own hosting services, such as our own Hostbox. Talk to your designer and don’t let your site be bogged down by your host.

2. Improving Conversion Rate

The way you showcase conversion elements on your site can make or break your business. If you’re getting visitors to your product pages, but aren’t getting any conversions, it might be time to talk to your web designer. They know what visitors expect to see and the types of images, placement of your product descriptions and even your call-to-action might not work well for your target audience.

Something as simple as adding an enlargement feature for product images or adding a section for social proof could make all the difference. Let your designer help you start boosting conversion rates.

3. Incorporating Visuals Correctly

Is your theme optimised for images and videos? What sizes should you upload? Where should you place them? All of these are questions your web designer can help you with. Maybe you started out with just a few images here and there, but now that you’re adding more, your site is bogged down and it’s starting to hurt your site’s reputation with search engines.

Talk to your web designer for help cleaning up your images, optimising all visuals for the web and changing to a theme that allows your site to make the most of videos. Just a few tweaks makes your site load faster and makes it more engaging for visitors.

4. Assisting With SEO

Designers are involved with some of the coding for your site, not just the developers. They can help with SEO by:

• Ensuring their code is clean and optimised
• Changing layouts to keep visitors on your site longer
• Aiding in choosing a domain name
• Assisting with some copywriting
• Helping with branding (on the site itself)
• Optimising social share options and calls-to-action
• Adding search friendly descriptions for visual elements

This is just the start. For instance, if you’re still going back and forth on a domain name, your designer could help you choose one that fits best with your brand and help you determine if a keyword or non-keyword domain is best.

Focusing on designing your site to better match with your business’s personality and purpose is crucial to brand recognition. Work with your designer closely and you’ll also be working on branding at the same time.

5. Regular Maintenance

Regular maintenance on your site might sound like something you’d have to do yourself, but your web designer can help. For instance, we offer several maintenance packages to handle regular tasks, such as backups, WordPress updates and security scanning. Over 170,000 WordPress sites were hacked in 2012 and experts agree, this number has significantly increased yearly. One study even found 29% of sites were vulnerable from an outdated theme. Let your web designer help you keep your beautiful site backed up, updated and secure.

6. Photography guidelines

A web designer is best suited to know the style of imagery your website needs to really work with the design they created for your brand. A photographer is employed to take photographs and sometimes when the photograph meets the website they don’t gel right. Having a chat without your designer before embarking on a photoshoot could save time and money, plus allow your website and imagery to blend seamlessly together.

2 simple examples:

1. When we designed the team page on Stelfox IT recruitment’s website we provide a brief for the photographer who carried out the team photoshoot. The brief was short and simple but provided information such as positioning, colours, whether staff should be indoors or outside, image size and format. This created a symmetrical team page which provided a look and feel of unity for Stelfox.
2. As part of the website design for Aqua restaurant we worked directly with their photographer on a photoshoot in the restaurant. Since we already knew the intended use for the images we were able to provide a guide on what was required such as making sure the background was blurred using a bokeh effect, contained empty or ‘dead space’ on at least 30% of one side of the image, as we intended to put text on top of the images. The outcome was very striking images with very legible text on top of them that were suitable to be used for both print and web promotions for Aqua.

Let Your Designer Do More

You could limit your designer or you could find out just what your web designer can help you with. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice in taking your site to the next level. Your designer is more than the layout and colour person. They’re the one making sure your site both looks and functions equally well.

Ready to see what your designer can do for you? Let Hidden Depth show you everything designers are capable of to make your site everything you dreamed of and more.

Image: Helloquence