In the bustling metropolis of Dubai, where businesses are constantly striving to make their mark in the digital world, choosing the right web design company is a critical decision. A well-designed website can be a powerful tool for brand recognition and customer engagement. Luckily the city has a lot of options when it comes to web designing and vStacks Software Solutions is one such reliable player in Dubai.

Here’s a guide to help you in finding the right web design company:

1. Define Your Goals:Before embarking on your search, clearly outline your website goals and objectives. Are you looking for an e-commerce platform, an informative corporate site, or a creative portfolio? Understanding your needs will help you find a web design company that specialises in your industry and can deliver the results you desire.

2. Research Extensively:Start your search by researching web design companies in Dubai. Explore their websites, portfolios, and client testimonials. A company’s previous work can give you insights into their design style, creativity, and capabilities.

3. Check Experience and Expertise:Experience matters in the world of web design. Look for a company with a proven track record of delivering successful projects. Check if they have experience in designing websites for businesses like yours. An experienced team will be well-equipped to handle your requirements and challenges.

4. Review Portfolios:A web design company’s portfolio is a showcase of their skills and creativity. Pay close attention to the diversity of their projects, design aesthetics, and user experience. A portfolio that resonates with your vision is a positive sign that they can bring your ideas to life.

5. Technical Expertise:Web design is not just about aesthetics; it involves technical aspects too. The chosen company should have a solid understanding of coding languages, responsive design, and user experience optimisation. A technically proficient team ensures your website functions seamlessly across devices and browsers.

6. Check Reviews and Testimonials:Reading client reviews and testimonials can provide valuable insights into the company’s professionalism, reliability, and customer satisfaction. Platforms like Google or social media can be great sources for authentic feedback.

7. Budget Considerations:While quality should never be compromised, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the costs involved. Discuss your budget with potential web design companies and ensure they can deliver within your financial constraints.

8. SEO and Digital Marketing:A successful website isn’t just about design; it’s also about visibility. Inquire if the company offers SEO services or collaborates with digital marketing experts. A website optimised for search engines is more likely to attract organic traffic and generate leads.

9. Support and Maintenance:Even after your website is launched, you’ll need ongoing support and maintenance. Ask about post-launch services, updates, and technical support. A reliable company will help ensure your website remains up-to-date and functional.

Remember, your website is an extension of your brand, and the right design partner like vStacks Software Solutions can help you create a digital masterpiece that resonates with your audience and drives business success. That’s why finding the right web design company is all the more critical.

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree, the first impression does make a difference. And at times, the difference it makes is huge, especially if your potential customers and clients are at stake. That is what is in line when people visit your website online. Unless they like your website the first time around, it is tough to make them your customer.

As a business owner, you need to ensure that your website is professional, modern, up-to-date, user-friendly, and mobile-friendly.

If your website is not up to the mark, you need to consider a website redesign. After all, with customer experience taking precedence over everything, it is crucial to offer your existing and potential customers the best you can.

From outdated web design to a lack of features and professionalism, there are many reasons why your website may need a redesign.  Redesigning your website can surely fetch you great results, but only if you do it the right way. Doing it the wrong way cannot just decrease your traffic flow, but it can also hamper your online success.

If your website needs a redesign, you need to make sure you do it the right way. Let us, therefore, take you through what to start with while redesigning your website, charting out a sitemap, and why to make your website mobile-friendly.

What to start with first?

If you want to get the best results from your website redesign project, you need to know what to start with first.
And, the first thing that you need to do is audit your website. You should start by analysing what works well for your current website and things that you need to do to improve your website. The best way to do it is to perform an SEO audit. An SEO audit analyses your technical aspects, your on-page aspects, and ranking factors. By the end of the audit, you will get to know what you need to change and things that you need to retain.
During the auditing, also make sure to identify your target audiences. You need to know who all to target with your new website design.
If you are designing your website on your own, there are many things to consider. Some of these include:
You need to find out who your existing website users are and how do they engage with your website.
You also need to find out when and at what time of the day they visited your website.
It is also important to know where they are coming from – their physical location and the search engine they used to visit your website.
Also, you need to know why they are visiting your website, and which device they use to visit your site.
But one rule of the thumb you should always stick to is this – don’t lose focus on your main objective. And, your main objective should be to cater to the needs of your present and prospective customers. Your website redesign should never overlook what your current and future customers want.
It is also important to have clear-cut goals and objectives. Your main aim of having a website is to generate new leads.
While redesigning your website, make sure you communicate clearly to your target audience – your services, new offerings, and other vital information. Also, ensure that you add an appropriate call to action wherever needed so that your visitors don’t have any problems. You should also consider adding forms to your main service pages to generate and monitor leads/ enquiries.

Charting out a sitemap

Another vital thing in website redesigning is charting out a sitemap. A sitemap is a file where you put up all the information about your pages, videos, and other files on your website. While crawling, the search engines read this file to get the relevant information for your website. A sitemap allows the search engine to know which pages and files are important on your website. Also, a sitemap provides valuable information about the files.
So, do you need a sitemap?
Yes, you might need a sitemap in case of the following:
You need a sitemap if your website is large.
You need a sitemap if there is a large archive of content pages on your website that are isolated or not linked properly to each other.
You also need a sitemap if your website is new, and there are very few external links.
Also, you need a sitemap if your website has a lot of rich media content like video and images or in case your site is shown in Google News.
You don’t need a complicated sitemap. You can make a sitemap like a flowchart and built-in Google Slides or PowerPoint. Another way of making a flowchart is to create an outline with bulleted points and indentations that specify your pages, sub-pages, and gives out other structural information.
To make a new sitemap, you need to do the following:
Make sure you have your existing website sitemap.
Make a list of your existing key services and products.
To make everything clear, make sure you have a clear link title format. For example, “Help Sheets” would change to “Downloads” to help users navigate resources easily.
You will notice that there are not too many changes in the top-level navigation, but there are significant changes in the sub-navigation.

Make it mobile-friendly

As mentioned earlier, if you are in the online landscape, the most important thing to tackle is customer experience. With most of us accessing the internet on our mobiles, it is crucial to make your site mobile-friendly. Smartphones have outnumbered personal computers in many countries. If you don’t make it mobile-friendly, your site will offer a poor user experience to people who access it on their smartphones. And, it is difficult to rank well on major search engines like Google if you don’t offer an excellent customer experience.
It is difficult to view a mobile-unfriendly site on a mobile device. You need to pinch or zoom your device to read the content of a mobile-unfriendly site. It is an annoying experience to read a mobile-unfriendly site, and the users are likely to leave the site for good. On the other hand, a mobile-friendly site is easy to read and use. It offers a much better user experience.
Regardless of your engagements in the online landscape – blogging, selling, or disseminating information – you need to make sure that your site is mobile-friendly. You need to understand that mobile is crucial to your business, and it is vital to take into consideration the user experience of those who access your site from their mobile devices.
The way your content fits the screen on the desktop, the same way your content should also fit the screen of a mobile device.
If your website lacks professionalism, is outdated and drab, and you want a website redesign services company to turn things around for you, you must contact vStacks Software Solutions now. We are a website design agency, and we know what it takes to design a modern, professional, and engaging website.

Digitisation has made the world a small market place. With the growth in the e-commerce vertical touching new heights, you can now buy and sell things you want from the place of your choosing by simply clicking on the mouse. More than half the world population now uses the internet, making it the most profitable market. However, it is not all that easy to climb the success ladder in the e-commerce business due to stiff competition.

If you want to do well in the e-commerce industry, you need to make sure that you do a lot of things right. And, one of the most important things that you need to concentrate on is the website design of your e-commerce platform. If your e-commerce website design is flawed, then it is difficult for you to climb the success ladder in the e-commerce industry.

You need to ensure that the design of your website is flawless because it is the face of your organisation. In case the quality of your website is poor, it is bound to disappoint your customers, which, in turn, will decrease your conversion rates. With so much competition in the e-commerce industry, you cannot survive if you don’t have an attractive, responsive, and flawless website design.

According to Statista, worldwide retail e-commerce sales amounted to 2.3 trillion US dollars in 2017, and the revenue is expected to touch 4.88 trillion US dollars in 2021.

The B2C e-commerce sales as a percentage of total retail sales in the United States in 2017 was 9% (Statista).

Online sales of physical goods in 2018 amounted to 504.6 billion US dollars which are projected to cross 735 billion US dollars in 2023 (Statista).

To climb the success ladder in the e-commerce business in 2019, the first thing that you need to do is avoid making these common e-commerce website design mistakes.

10 e-commerce website design mistakes you should avoid in 2019

A poor website design can adversely affect your e-commerce business. Customers these days have become smart, intelligent, impatient, and aware. And, if you don’t look after their interests well, they don’t think twice to shift to your competitor/s. After all, nothing is more important than offering a good user experience to all your customers. If your customers are not satisfied with you, they will stop doing business with you.

And, that is the reason why you cannot ignore your e-commerce website design. Good website design is the integration of function and appearance that leaves a lasting effect on your customers and prospects. But even today some businesses are not using user-friendly web designs, and the result is they are missing big time on revenue.

Here are top e-commerce website design mistakes you need to avoid if you want to beat the competition in the online arena:

1. Not making a responsive design – One of the biggest e-commerce website design mistakes is not to make your website design responsive. With the usage of mobile devices on the rise, if you don’t have a responsive web design, your customers will not do business with you. Responsive web design means that your website page should resize itself to fit the size of the screen of your customer’s device. Hence, your e-commerce page should fit the same way on all the mobile devices as it appears on the desktops and laptops. Also, if your website design is not responsive, it is difficult for you to climb the search engine rankings.

Therefore, make sure that your website design is responsive so that it does not frustrate your prospective customers.

2. Not paying attention to the load speed of your website – If your website takes too long to load, then it is a problem. Customers/ visitors don’t like websites that take too long to load. Moreover, search engines also have a special dislike for websites that take long to load. If your website takes more than 2 seconds to load, then you need to find out ways to improve the load speed of your website. Slow load speeds affect your rankings, conversions, and hence your overall revenues. A lot of things can hamper the load speed of your website like internet speed, hosting server, images on your website, etc. But one thing that can make a huge difference to the load speed of your website is the way your website is designed. It is while making the website that developers need to take care of the load speed.

Hence, you need to make sure that the load speed is taken into consideration from the start. You also need to ensure that your homepage loads much faster as compared to other pages because Google gives more importance to your index page.

3. Not having a trustworthy design – Trust is the backbone of e-commerce business. And, if you can’t instil trust among your buyers, they are unlikely to do business with you. One thing that can instil confidence and trust among your buyers is a trustworthy design. It is extremely important to have a trustworthy design.

You should hire a professional web designing company if you don’t have the necessary expertise in making a trustworthy design. Selecting the correct colour scheme for your online store, choosing the right animations, and design elements for your website are vital for making it trustworthy. You need to remember that your potential customers are smart enough to differentiate a trustworthy website from an untrustworthy one.

4 .Having an empty About page – The About page should have all the necessary information. It should provide information about your company, website, and your vision. Many e-commerce buyers are known to visit the About us page before proceeding further. If the About us page is incomplete or empty, then it is not possible to do well in the e-commerce business. Information on the About us page can instil confidence among your buyers.

Ensure that the About Us page has all the information that makes it look trustworthy. You should also put your contact information on every page. But make sure that the information is correct. Putting in multiple contact mediums like phone number, email, and fax is also helpful.

5. Having poor website navigation – Another e-commerce website design mistake is not to offer seamless website navigation. When it comes to the e-commerce business, offering your customers great website navigation is a must. Website navigation can directly affect your search engine rankings, and hence your traffic. If the navigation of your site is poor, it renders your high-quality content useless and can also increase the bounce rates. Hence, what you need to do is make sure that your website offers seamless navigation.

You should have a user-friendly navigation strategy to boost your conversion rates. Make sure that your product categories are very specific so that your customers find it easy to locate what they want. You can also include a recently added tab and a recently viewed product tab.

Not having a search option – If your e-commerce website does not have a search option, then it is a problem. Having a search feature on your e-commerce website can boost your conversion rates, and it also keeps your customers satisfied. With a search feature in place, your customers find it easy to locate the product of their choice quickly. And, if you don’t have a search feature in place, it can adversely affect your mobile conversions, search engine rankings, and organic traffic.

Always have a search option for your customers, and place it prominently on your e-commerce site. Having a search feature improves your customer’s user experience.

7.Having a complicated checkout design – Your e-commerce website should always have a simple checkout process. A complicated checkout process can frustrate your customers, and it can adversely affect your conversion rates.

Hence, your checkout process should always be simple. Showing the current information on your visitor’s shopping cart with complete fee and cost breakdown they need to pay is one way of simplifying your checkout design. Also, to avoid cart abandonment, make sure that the load speed of your checkout page is fast.

8 .Not paying attention to social media integration – Social media integration is a necessity these days because it helps build trust, boosts traffic, and improves your search engine rankings. Social media integration can help increase your sales as well. It is one of the most cost-effective ways of advertising your products. You can display your products on social media and insert a link to your e-commerce website to improve user engagement and increase sales.

Make sure that you prominently display your social buttons on your product pages to improve user engagement.

9. Unclear and confusing product descriptions – If you want to improve the user experience of your customers, you need to make sure that you don’t confuse your customers. The content you use to describe and explain the products on your e-commerce site is known as product description, and it is showcased in a manner that it appeals to the buyers. Your product description should not confuse your buyers; it needs to be clear and concise. If your product description is not clear and concise, it adversely affects your conversion rates.

If you want your conversion rates to increase, you should make sure that you have proper images and written text to describe your product. If that is not the case, your prospects can leave your site without buying anything from your e-commerce site.

10. Not having high-quality images – In the e-commerce industry, images play a crucial role. You, therefore, need to make sure that your website has high-quality images. That is the reason why you should hire a professional photographer so that they can pick high-quality images for your online store. To give your customers a clear insight of the products, you should make sure that you provide a magnifying feature inside your product page.

If you want a flawless e-commerce website design, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. We have the necessary experience, expertise, and exposure to design a modern, trustworthy, responsive, and attractive website for your e-commerce platform. vStacks Software Solutions can also help you on the e-commerce hosting front.

Do you know what people think when they visit your website for the first time?

In case the look and feel of your website are not up-to-the-mark, your customers can leave your site in search of an interesting one. Look and feel here refers to the design and user experience of your website which are extremely vital from your customer’s perspective. Most of the visitors who form a negative first impression are unlikely to return to your site ever again.

It is for this reason that you need to have a professional website.

You miss big time on opportunities if you are unable to generate the required interest at first glance.

It is all about creating a good first impression.

What you have is a few seconds to impress your visitors. And, you risk losing your prospects to your competitors if you are unable to impress them in that short span.

Website designing is an important function, and you need to be careful of what you present. You should make sure that you deliver your message loud and clear. Also, it should be easy for the user to navigate your site and the call-to-action or CTAs need to be distinct. That is the reason why you need a professional website.

When you emphasize on making your website professional, it not just looks great, but it also performs well. A professional website is easy to navigate, engaging, and has helpful links that help improve the user experience of your visitors.

Content alone cannot make your website tick, you need to make sure that the design and layout of your website attract your visitors and when they reach your site, they don’t have difficulty in navigating your site.

Hence, if you don’t have a professional website, you stand to lose a lot of business opportunities to your competitors.

Thus, what should you do to make your website more professional? Here is what can help you make your website more professional.

7 ways that can help you make your website look professional

You can either make a website on your own or hire a professional agency to develop it for you. But, one thing that you should bear in mind is that your website needs to be professional so that you don’t lose out on opportunities for the lack of it. Make sure that you follow these ground rules to make your website look and feel professional.

7 ways that can make your website look professional:

Keep it simple – People don’t like clutter. It is not just difficult to look at a cluttered website; it is also hard to navigate such sites. To make your website look professional, you need a clutter-free, well organized, and clean website which should be easy to navigate for your users. A simple website is great to look at and is also easy to navigate. Users have a preconceived notion of how a professional website should look like and when you are unable to deliver that experience they get disappointed. Make sure to arrange the content and buttons neatly and lay a lot of emphases while choosing the fonts and images. A professional website should be clean and clear, and it needs to deliver your brand’s message explicitly.

Select the fonts and colors carefully – To make your website look professional, you need to select the fonts that are easy to read and colors that are neither too bright nor too bland. If your website has fonts that make it difficult for your visitors to read, then it is hard for them to stay on your site. Also, if you are using too many colors or selecting colors that too flashy or too dull, then it can put off the users. You should use interesting, eye-catching and easy to read fonts so that it does not give your visitors a headache. With over 43,000 fonts to choose from, you have plenty of option to select the right one for your website. You should select a font that matches your company’s culture and style, but make sure that it gives a comfortable reading experience to your visitors. As for the color of your website, a white background is a classic option that will remain in fashion for the years to come. Also, use colors that complement each other and make sure to use them at the right places.

Use eye catching images – Visual learning is far superior to other forms of learning like hearing or reading. People learn faster from the images as compared to what they read or hear. You need to keep this information in mind when you start designing your website, especially the homepage design. You can use an eye-catching image that leaves an indelible impression on your visitors. But, make sure to use images that are in line with the purpose and character of your business. Hence, to make your website professional, make sure that you use eye-catching and bold images that leave a long-lasting impression on your visitors.

Don’t forget to add video to your website – Video is the latest favorite of those who frequent the online arena. 85 percent of the American internet audience watches video online. More and more online marketers are adding videos to promote their products and services. If you are not adding video to your website, chances are you are missing out a lot. Also, for many, watching a video is much easier and simpler than reading the text. Hence, it is always important to add videos to your website to engage with your customers.

Make sure your website loads faster – People these days don’t have the patience to wait endlessly for your website to load. An average user will abandon your website if it takes long to load. Hence, if you want to make your website professional, you need to ensure that it loads faster. Websites that take long to load are more often than not abandoned. As the load time increases, the rate of abandonment also increases. Moreover, if your website takes longer to load, your search ranking on the Google also takes a hit. Page design and programming has a significant impact on the load speed of your website. There is a lot that can be done to improve the load speed of your website. To name a few, you can optimize the code, reduce the number of redirects, and optimize the images.

Make your website responsive – Your website is considered unprofessional if it does not offer a seamless experience on all devices. More and more people now access the net through their mobile devices, namely their smartphones and tablets. To make your website professional, make sure that it not only looks good on the desktops and laptops, but it also appears the same on smartphones and tablets. If the users don’t find your website responsive, they will leave it. You need to make sure that the layout of your website should fit the small screen devices the way it fits on the desktops and laptops. You also need to ensure that your website looks good on all the browsers. It is important that your visitors have a seamless as well as the same experience on all the devices.

Don’t just think about the design, also consider SEO – What is the point of creating a professional website if people are unable to find it during a search. As and when you plan to create a professional website, you should also make sure that you have SEO plan ready so that your site can rank higher on the search engines. A well thought out SEO strategy will have a direct bearing on the content and layout of your website, hence do factor it in before you start the process.

If a professional website is what you want for your business, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. Whether it is making your website responsive or helping it load faster, we make sure that your website looks and feels professional on all the fronts.

vStacks Software Solutions is a professional web designing and development company. We can not only design a professional website for your business, but we can also formulate an effective SEO strategy. Also, we can help you out with your content marketing strategy.

The net has changed the ways in which businesses these days conduct themselves. Whether you are in UAE, America or India, growing digitisation, internet penetration and mobile connectivity has diminished the borders and opened up the marketplace to a wider audience.
And, if you are a businessman based out of Dubai, but you still do not have your website, then you are losing on the online bonanza in a big way. Also, if you do have a website, but you are not getting sufficient number of visitors, then there is something wrong with your online strategy, you need to consider hiring a web design company that can develop and maintain a smart website for your business, which gives you the desired results.
Selecting a web design company for creating and maintaining your website is a crucial decision to make. You should carefully weigh your options, do some research on your own, and then finalise.
It is important to take note of these 5 tips when hiring a web design company for developing and upkeep of your website.

5 tips you should keep in mind when hiring a web design company

1. There is no alternate to experience.
   It is important to look for an organisation, which is established and has ample experience in the web design industry. You can measure this from their number of years in operation, the portfolio they carry and the clients they work for. Always keep in mind your long term interest. Hence, a company that is professional, has stable business operation and can take care of your long term needs is what you should look for.
   Do not try to save money and hire an agency or an individual just because their services are comparatively economical. This most often than not will prove to be damaging to the success of your business.
   Also, ensure that the company you are dealing with is not outsourcing the job to a third party. Hence, the company that you engage with should have their own web developers, support staff and technical experts.
2. Find out the kind of support they provide.
   Support is an important function which you cannot do without, and it is better that the terms are spelt out in advance. The company you hire should be able to provide timely, knowledgeable, reliable and cost effective support. Changes on the internet happen at a lightning fast speed, a professional help therefore is a must. From hosting to email and domain name to using the content management system, you might need their help at every step.
   It is always advisable to get support from the company that is designing your website.
3. Always make your website mobile friendly
   Smartphone market not just in Dubai, but the world over, is growing at a fast pace. Many of your clients now view sites on their mobile devices as well. Make sure that the company you hire makes your website mobile friendly, a must for the success of your company.
4. Find out in advance about the costing and timeline of your website.
   Based on your need, prices of websites can genuinely vary. The cost of your website would increase if you are looking for specific functionalities, or if the design is too intricate, or if the number of pages are more. But, everything in terms of what you have to pay, depending of course on your requirement, should be spelt out in advance.
   It is also very significant that before penning the agreement you ask the company whether they can meet your timeline. Being professionals they must honour what they commit.
5. Make sure that you own the designs and content of your website.
   This is another important mistake which should be avoided. Again, before getting into a deal you need to ask them whether they are ready to hand over all the proprietary rights of the website to you. In case your company is looking for investment capital, you should be the owner of the content and design of the website.

Also, make sure that your website is on a CMS platform, so that you have access to the content. This will allow you to edit or update the website content as and when you want. A CMS software has a user friendly interface, which makes it easy for you to add or edit the content conveniently.

If you own a business, but do not have a website, or in case you are not getting sufficient number of visitors for your site, then you should instantaneously get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now.

vStacks Software Solutions is a professionally managed web designing services company, which gives you 24X7 expert support. They have sufficient experience to meet all your web design needs.

At vStacks Software Solutions, we hand-hold you to harness the full potential of the internet.