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!