Freelance Internet Jobs Kenya--How to Get Repeat Web Design Jobs

Web usability according to research, was proven to be the most significant factor in web design. In fact, it is the influential element that keeps visitors returning to a site.

Usually the most overlooked aspect when designing a website, nonetheless in actuality, usability has power over the web. When visitors can not easily navigate your site, chances are, he will not utilize your library in search for information and just go to other sites. Note that all sites are just a click of the mouse away. Hundreds of thousands of other online stores that offer the same services or products as you are crowding the internet, making online shoppers more selective and choosy when concluding whether to stay and continue their browsing or just leave.

The internet offers online shoppers ample freedom and various choices; nobody will ever waste their time on a poorly constructed website. In order to provide web usability, you must involve or think of your prospect clients in designing it.

Not like a traditional "brick and mortar" store, a lot of online stores or websites do not permit their visitors to "walk through" inside the site as they can in a traditional store set-up. While this may seem an unworkable task to accomplish, if done correctly, a "user-friendly" approach to web design will easily accomplish this task.

When online shopping, all things must to be located where visitors expect them to be at. The practice of flooding a client with abundant item choices all at the same time and making them search for certain items that they need, is most definitely not the concept of web usability.

Your visitors must be taken into consideration all throughout your planning as well as designing process. Bear in mind that web usability must never be considered after the construction of a website.

Fixing and then testing your website only after construction is useless and will not yield satisfactory results. Your best approach would be to combine a replica of "pervasive usability" unto your web design and construction process.

According to surveys, here are top 12 reasons why visitors want to go back to your site:

• Easy navigation-- 74%

• Quick download time-- 65%

• Frequently updated information-- 58%

• Content quality-- 57%

• Content quantity-- 30%

• Content organization-- 40%

• Prompt customer service-- 40%

• Website search tools-- 25%

• Layout of homepage-- 20%

• Enjoyment-- 19%

• Website appearance-- 18%

• Inclusion of animated graphics-- 9%

Basing from these reasons, here are usability tips to help you design your website:

1. Become familiar with your visitors based on their preferences. You need a website with personality as well as content quality that accommodates your visitor's taste; you should understand and recognize their color choices, technical skills, etc.

2. Create obvious and simple interface. The more apparent and recognizable the web interface is, then your visitors never have to undergo frustration in guessing how your site really works, and instead on concentrating on the interface, they should be concentrating on your site's content.

3. Website readability. Create "easy to read" paragraph, not using small text or font size.

4. Quick loading. You need a fast downloadable page as visitors hate to wait.

5. Avoid hidden navigation, as your visitors need to know where and what to click in order to go someplace.

6. Get visitor feedbacks so you will know what is working and what does not. Learn from your prospects.

7. Investigate on website visitor performance. Determine how long it takes to perform a certain task? It should not take too long, the faster the better. If not, work on your user interaction so to improve performance.

8. Provide a help section. If your website visitor does make a certain mistake, then they truly will appreciate it if you provide ways to assist them. "404 page" is great for directing 'spiders" to crawl unto your webpage. Testing for usability

Testing for usability is not complicated and very inexpensive to carry out. The easiest answer is to design a simple sequence of undertakings for web users to carry out trials.

Invite people or friends to your workplace, then request them to navigate your website, watching and observing while they surf. Do not wait when your website is done before you test it; test it now.

The work can be simple like finding out a product's information or finding out how a certain firm can be contacted or one can order a product and finding shipping policies information.

After testing, fix any problem and test it again. Continue testing and refining web usability of your website until such time that there are no problems found, that the experience is efficient and pleasant.

Remember that website usability is concerned to not just the appearance of a site, but more importantly how your site performs and particularly, it gives emphasis on the experience of your visitors.

All the best in your quest to provide high quality freelance web design services!

Bye for now.

Jobs Kenya--5 Important Rules To Remember in Your Kenya Website Design Business

I have been very busy the past couple of days. But I can't complain. I have decided to be writing this Kenyan jobs (freelance)blog in the morning or during the day while I am still 'fresh'.
That is after I realized that by 5 PM I am so tired that I just want to go home. So, I hope you will enjoy this 'fresher writing'
I will be writing a couple of posts on starting a web design business in Kenya and then after that will concentrate on another area that you can make money online from.
Ask all all the questions you may have and I will be happy to answer them in comments.

When it comes to a client's website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose.
Here are five important rules to observe to make sure the website performs well.

a) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page. So, as a designer if you want to stay long in the web design business avoid creating websites with splash pages. Remember your ultimate goal should be to ensure that your client succeeds. That way he will order more websites in the future and you can be guaranteed of referrals.

b) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide create a website that will provide more valuable content and then ask the client to weave relevant affiliate links into his content, and let visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

c) Have a simple and clear navigation

Provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If the client's site visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave the site.

d) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing a site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If a visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on the website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

These are not all the important things you need to consider when designing websites but these 5 are crucial if you are to give your clients a good value for their money.
This also applies if you are creating your own site.

That's it for now folks!

Jobs Kenya: How To Start a Web Design Business in Kenya

Hello friends!

Had a busy day and was debating whether to write this post or not. However, I have decided that for the benefit of those seeking for jobs Kenya or any form of employment Kenya then I should at least write something.

My last post had a list of freelance jobs in Kenya that you can get online. In this post I want to focus on Web Design. I will assume that most of the people reading this know what web design is and thus there is no need for defining what it is.

To start a web design and development freelance kind of job in Kenya just like in many other places require you to have that back ground knowledge in webs design. You need to be conversant with programming languages like PHP, ASP, C+, C++,Ajax, Flash,etc. However, you can also design good websites without a lot of programming skills by using a program like Joomla.

With that background knowledge all you need is to get a website or blog to let people know what you do. It will be difficult to convince a potential client you can design a good website for him if you don't have a site of your own. If you want to make money online as a web designer you want to make sure your site looks great. That should not discourage you though. You can start with a blog. Visit www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com and get a free blog. Then as you go on and earn more money you can get a killer site to showcase your web design skills.

Once you get your first client make sure you serve them well and that way you will get repeat business and a lot of referrals. You can work with both local and international clients. If your target is international clients then you will need to spend time on the internet marketing your services. You will also need to get a reliable way of getting paid for your work. You can use different methods of online payment including Alert Pay, Money Gram , PayPal, Western Union, 2CheckOut, Checks, etc. I will write some posts later on payment methods available for you if you are in Kenya and are looking for a job Kenya online.

The only thing that remains now is for you to manage your business well and ensure you treat all your clients right. That way you will be in business for a long time.

That's it for today folks! Same time tomorrow.

Jobs Kenya: Getting Started With Online Jobs in Kenya

Hi people,

Thank you for stopping by!

Jobs Kenya. These two words mean a lot to many young and not-so-young Kenyans. As more and more Kenyans get 'papers' competition for the few available jobs continue to increase. This has made things more difficult as even those who could not get much in class get their 'papers' from River Road and other places. Employment in kenya has proofed to be a challenge even to the government. As much as it may try ( I pray it does) it may not be able to cater for all the people getting into the job market every year. Enough of trying to show you there is a problem. Because I know you know there is. What is the solution?

One way that young people can benefit from is finding and pursuing opportunities online. Online careers Kenya are countless. There is a lot more that you can do online than you ever imagined. The most common online jobs or services that you can provide online include;

1. Web design and development
2. Graphic design
3. Online marketing
4. Virtual assistance/administrative support.
5. Creative writing
6. Proofreading
7. Internet based research
8. An e-commerce store
9. Web administration
10. Online training
11. Domaining/Site flipping
12. Blogging
    

As you will note this list is very conservative. There are tons of stuff you can do online to make money online. Also most of the services listed above can be broken down into two or more services that you can focus on. The important thing is to focus on a given area and build a name around that.

Unlike brick and mortar businesses online businesses require a high level of trust and for this to happen you have to prove you can do or have done what you claim in the past--successfully. You need to showcase your past work. That is commonly known as a 'portfolio' in online business circles. Once you are started the trick is to keep doing what you are doing consistently. You have to ensure the quality of your services is unquestionable and your delivery timely.

With some of your past work ready the next thing to do is establish an online presence albeit small. Make it possible for potential clients to get to know more about you and your services. In the make money online niche the competition is cut-throat so you have to be good at what you do. This should not discourage you though. The market also is huge and it grows by the second.

The best way to earn money online is to do something you don't struggle with. What do you enjoy doing? If making money is the only thing that drives you to work on the Internet then your online presence may be short lived as you will run out of steam sooner than later.

You can establish your presence online using a free blog like this one on www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.com, www.ning.com,etc. Describe what you do, the fees and how people interested in your service can contact you. Then hit the 'marketing road'. You will have to employ all manner of marketing methods(not spam though) that come to mind to promote your new site. I will write in depth about how to market online so as to make money in future posts.

With consistency you should be able to see some results after some time. Once you get your first client make sure you treat them the best way you know how. If the experience they have working with you is good you are almost assured of repeat business.

Of course there is more to doing freelance online jobs than what I have written in this short post. I expect that as time goes by you will get more. So keep coming by :). If you have a question or comment about jobs Kenya I will be glad to help you through comments.

Until tomorrow have a nice time and best of luck!

Kenyan Jobs: Freelance Internet Jobs For Kenyans

Hello all.
It has been over a year since I last posted on this blog! That is a long time. I really wanted to write but for some reason haven't found the time to do that. I have been working online for close to two years after looking for Kenyan jobs without much success. I also didn't like the idea of someone always breathing over my neck. I think I had a 'hard head' as they say. Well, but I think almost all entrepreneurs are 'misfits'. They don't fit in a 'caged' environment. That aside.

Since when I started this blog I have done countless stuff. I have learnt a lot about freelance work. I think it is better I didn't do serious writing then as what I would have written then is not what I will write now. I now plan to be 'disciplined' and write one article a day. I will be squeezing a few minutes everyday and write something that I believe will benefit anyone who would like to get some freelance work while still in Kenya.

Right now I am not sure how to structure this blog. I plan to just write and organize the blog as it takes shape. It will have all the information you will need to start and ran a successful freelance business in Kenya.

My hope is that by reading my blog you will be able to get started as a freelancer or someone who works at home in Kenya. I also hope to learn a lot from you.

Happy reading!