Environmental signage is based on themes and stories. It is not uncommon to see a corporate business story depicted in visuals with images, illustrations, and text. We can find these in the shopping centers, malls and other commercial establishments that wish to gain more loyalty.

This signage in a way converts the otherwise ordinary spaces into an artsy spot where people can relax and benefit from their time shopping. Going to the malls is a lot more relaxing these days as compared to what it used to be in the past. The retailers and other business owners are putting in more of an effort to gain recognition from the market by stepping up their branding efforts. Every image has the power to raise some sort of feeling, and images with motion have more power to invoke emotions.

Wayfinding signage is a part of environmental signage systems as it is essential to any environment. Everyone needs directions in an unfamiliar place so they can get around with a certain level of mental comfort. This helps them make fast and informed decisions. These days, all environments want to make sure that no one is ever lost and the management company ensures the place has a low crime incidence. Shopping malls and arcades are outfitted with security cameras to monitor the movement of those that pass through. This helps everyone get some peace of mind while on the go. The artsy graphics used in the environment also help visitors in general maintain a positive frame of mind. People are able to find directions, visual cues, symbols, and maps to remain safe and secure.

The best benefit of having wayfinding signage is that it helps everyone save time. When you have several errands to run and walk into a multi-story building, it can take a lot of time looking for your destination. With quick, understandable directions and maps near the entrance, anyone navigating the area for the very first time can make the trip quickly. Many buildings have kiosks that are WiFi enabled. You can check for the nearby restaurants, hotels, stores and so forth in a matter of seconds. Making an outdoor trip in a well-developed area is a lot easier and safe as compared to one that has no visual communication for guidance. Shoppers in such localities have little trust in people and stores.

For any store to make more sales it is vital to build a relationship of trust within its immediate environment. No matter how friendly your counter staff, you will still need to help shoppers with wayfinding. Attracting and retaining customer attention is important in any retail establishment; therefore, one has to pay special attention to making the stores look visually appealing to buyers. If customers find what they are looking for quickly they will be done with their shopping sooner. This will help them shop with confidence and they are sure to return back to make more purchases. Loyalties are built when consumers feel close to your brand. Offering discounts and specials are also another way of retaining your brand name in the consumer’s mind. Wherever the consumers find more savings they are bound to shop there more often.

If you use exterior signage your store will be easy to find. This signage will also add to your curb appeal. The passerby will remember the store name and what it sells. It will help you grow your customer base. When you make changes to your facade the neighbors talk about it and appreciate the changes. This also helps you get more popular through word of mouth. Before someone enters the store they expect to have either a positive or a negative experience. When the store is shabby and has no wayfinding system the customer will take in a negative impact. On the other hand, when the store is in tiptop shape and has good environmental signage system they will have a positive experience.

Your first impression is important and an impressive one will help expand the clientele. Customers look at signage as an indicator of eminence. They look for clues to service standards and quality. Good signage connects better and makes for a lasting impression. In the market, the competition is tough and there are ways to keep ahead of rivals. The better quality of service that you provide will boost customer trust. Offering better customer services, good discounts, and specials, a well-managed environmental signage system will help you compete with rivals well.

PaulLarry

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Robots.txt is a text file you put on your site to inform search robots which pages you would like them not to visit. Robots.txt is by no means mandatory for search engines however usually search engines obey what they are asked not to do.

If webmasters may tell the search engine spiders to skip pages that they do not believe significant enough to be crawled, then they have a better opportunity to have their most costly pages featured in the search engine results pages. The robots.txt file is an easy method of fundamentally easing the procedure for the spiders to return the most relevant search results.

The location of robots.txt is very vital. It must be in the main directory because otherwise user agents (search engines) will not be capable to search it – they do not search the whole site for a file named robots.txt. Instead, they search first in the main directory (like http://mydomain.com/robots.txt) as well as if they don’t find it there, they basically assume that this site does not have a robots.txt file as well as therefore they index everything they find along the way. So, if you don’t put robots.txt in the right place, do not be astonished that search engines index your whole site.

Why do you need robots.txt?

Robots.txt files control crawler to particular areas of your site. While this can be very dangerous if you accidentally disallow Googlebot from crawling your entire site, there are some situations in which a robots.txt file may be very handy.

Some common utilize cases include:

• Preventing duplicate content from appearing in SERPs (note that meta robots is often a superior choice for this)
• Keeping entire sections of a website private (for instance, your engineering team’s staging site)
• Staying internal search results pages from showing up on a public SERP
• Specifying the location of sitemap.
• Preventing search engines from indexing sure files on your website (images, PDFs, etc.)
• Specifying a crawl delay in order to stop your servers from being overloaded while crawlers load several pieces of content at once
• If there are no areas on your site to which you want to control user-agent access, you might not require a robots.txt file at all.

How does it work?

Before a search engine crawls your site, it will look at your robots.txt file as instructions on where they are allowed to crawl (visit) and index (save) on the search engine results.

Robots.txt files are useful:

• If you want search engines to ignore any duplicate pages on your website
• If you don’t want search engines to index your internal search results pages
• If you don’t want search engines to index certain areas of your website or a whole website
• If you don’t want search engines to index certain files on your website (images, PDFs, etc.)

If you wish to tell search engines where your sitemap is located

Naveen Kumar

https://www.jdmwebtechnologies.com/

I am Naveen Kumar, the founder and CEO of the affordable SEO Company in India, JDM Web Technologies, is an expert in Google Analytics, Bing Ads, Google Adwords Certified and Woorank Digital Marketing expert certified company. I have more than 9 years of experience in the field of Digital Marketing, SEO Services, PPC, SMO and ORM. As a team we can provide you with all the services that you need for your online business and at the same time I can assure that you will get all our affordable SEO packages within a reasonable pricing.

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Nobody has the mind-set that everyone that owns a car is a mechanic.  Nor should they then have the mind-set that every one that owns a computer is a web developer.  Choosing the right individual to design your website is as important as the content it should contain.  It will, for instance, not be the best choice to appoint a graphic designer as your sole web developer. With the focus mainly on graphics, some important objectives might be overlooked and you will end up with a website that might not be browser independent.  Nor will it have the functionality you seek in a well-designed website.

As mentioned above, the main focus of web design should be the functionality of the webpage, the ease at which users interact with the design, and the basic optimization of the overall website.  It is what you can provide to the users that should have more attention. A clean design is always an appealing one.

When looking at the functionality of your web design, there are a few questions you should ask yourself.  This will help you get a better understanding of the degree of functionality you currently have on your website.  Questions might include:

• If your website has links, are they all working and loading as they should?
• Do you have the necessary security that is required for users to operate on your website?  
• Does your website contain contact forms or feedback forms, and are they working properly?

Answering these questions will give you a clear understanding of the functionality of your web design. You can use some free resources to build a website as well.

Just as important as functionality is the ease at which users can interact with the website. Sometimes designing for ease of use might require giving up some functionality, which will be worth it as the user will be able to easily navigate your design, getting them where they need to be faster.

There are numerous articles about web design optimization available on the web.  But what it basically gets down to is this: how fast can I access the content that I need.  Speed is the number one factor in web design.  With articles ranging from acceptable response time to web performance matters, all users online agree – They want things to happen now!

Studies have shown that an average response time of 4 seconds seems to be the norm when opening a webpage.  So it is essential that the main page of your website opens within that limit. With limited images and smaller image sizes incorporated in your web development, this might not be so hard to do.  Consider what impression you want the users to have and work according to that. No need to bombard them with detail and images on the firsts page. A well-structured website will make any web developer earn his keep.

Satendra Kashyap

https://www.techmelife.com/

Satendra Kashyap is an investigative journalist for Times of India, My brief writing career comprises of writing short articles for online magazines and blogs, writing features for local monthly magazines and developing marketing material for offshore clients. I’ve experience in creating engaging yet optimized content for search engines.

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