Web Designing Tips For New Web Designers

Websites are such useful tools. They are great for sharing information, selling products, and staying in touch and up to date with family and friends. As a web designer with some "hard knocks" experience under my belt I would like to share some tips for getting started that should make the process a little easier and a little less confusing. The basics that you need to know about putting together a website are keep it simple, keep it relevant, and keep it accessible.Keep It SimpleKeep it simple is one of the most overused clichés in the business world but, in this case, it is an absolutely necessary cliché. By telling you to keep your website simple I am in no way advocating that you make it dull, uninteresting, and boring. Not at all, in fact, I am saying quite the opposite. If a website is too cluttered with visuals it will not be easy to navigate. If a person cannot find what it is they are looking for than they will not come back to your site, even if what they need is on your site. Make sure that your design has a specific focus. There should be a homepage that easily directs people to the specific section of your site that they need to get to. The last time I was exposed to the information I read that the average attention span of Americans is slightly less than two minutes. It becomes even shorter when they are browsing the Internet because there is so much to look at. If they cannot find what they want on your site immediately, there are hundreds of other places they can look. Also, don't put a lot of Flash stuff on your site; the extra time it takes up will make viewers impatient.Keep It RelevantIt is amazing the number of websites that are dedicated to one subject but then just throw all kinds of other stuff in there. If someone is looking to buy quilts they don't really want to have to wade through vacation pictures to get to the quilt page. Also, if someone is looking for a specific topic, subject, or item and they see something else when they get to your homepage, they won't stick around long enough to realize that they are at the right spot. They will leave and find another site to browse. That ties in with the simplicity of your site as well. Irrelevant material makes a website complicated. Even things like random 'jokes of the day' or comic strips, while funny I'm sure, will drive more people away than bring them in.Keep It AccessibleThere are two things to consider when dealing with accessibility issues, outside accessibility and inside accessibility. These two, if mastered, will drive people to your site and keep them coming back over and over. These two, if disregarded, will leave you with a nice, clean, unused site that does nothing more than take up cyberspace.Outside AccessibilityIn order for people to get to your site they have to be able to find it. Sure, you can hand out business cards and email the URL to all your friends, but that is not where the majority of your traffic comes from. You have to make sure that your site can be found by searching the major search engines. In order to do this, you have to have content that will register hits when web browsers perform a search. For instance, if you are selling woven baskets you, obviously, want to make sure that your site mentions, in a readable way, that you are selling woven baskets. You would also want to make sure that your site mentions that you are selling crafts as there are people who would be interested in buying your baskets but would search for "crafts for sale". These are called keywords and you want to make sure that you have enough of them to register when a search is performed. Inside Accessibility This merely ties back in with keeping it simple. If someone goes to your site where you sell all different kinds of arts and crafts, but they are only interested in buying Popsicle stick bird feeders, you need to have an easy way for them to find what they are looking for. Otherwise, they will just go somewhere else. It is always a good idea to have a search option for within your site to accommodate easy browsing

Get Your Website Designed Or Redesigned By Most Talented Website Designers

Unlike any bedside story, the website story is full of hard facts and realities that need your unvarying interest and attention. And here they are listed for your careful consideration. However, you may ask yourself a simple question at the beginning as to why you are paying attention to the website story. If this eventually leads you to building your own Web Design or you are planning to get it done professionally, this may help you a lot. Otherwise, forget about it. Nevertheless, take a careful look at the following before you draw your conclusions.

• Web design or site look and feel. It includes the graphics, layout and the navigation – jobs assigned to designers. The web designer will also do some essential pages like home page, contact, etc and place the content in it. However, they would not normally optimize the content or at best do some primary page optimization. But bear in mind that the optimization is far more significant than the site design. If in case, more pages are required, the web designer or the website designer would do that for an additional charge.

• Most website design companies are also capable of adding sales pages to a website at a minor cost if the customer has smaller number of items to sell. But setting up and maintaining an online catalogue is far more expensive and so the customer should preferably settle this issue beforehand with the web designer or the design company. But whatever the case may be, web page design services also includes the backend programming part.

• SEO or the Search Engine Optimization can also be a part of a web design plan. 

However, the web design company or the website designer is also responsible for many other aspects relating to a website that require clarification right at the beginning and are so listed below.

• The number of web pages that are included in the price.

• The time to be taken to complete the web pages.

• Who is the ultimate owner of the finished design?

• If the logo is included in the price.

• If the web pages are optimized for 3 primary search engines.

• Keywords that are optimized as also what for.

• Cost of additional pages, if required.

• Does the designer provide training so that others can add pages?

• Dos the designer host the website and if so, the charges involved in it. 

Turn to Sigma Infotech when you are looking for a website design Sydney company. The fact is, there is more to designing a web page than meets the eyes. Firstly, the page has to look good because otherwise the visitors would just exit the page and the business would suffer. Then secondly, the backend has to work smoothly because the website just cannot afford any programming errors. The navigation has to work perfectly so that visitors can easily move from one page to another and the web page design company also has to ensure that there are no shopping cart issues if that is the website is accepting online payments.

Looking for a web design Sydney Company? Look no further than Sigma InfoTech.

Website Is The First Important Thing To Keep In Mind

1. The pleasant outlook of a website is the first important thing to keep in mind. Too much use of pattern or colors can drive the viewers away.

2. DO NOT use unnecessary audio or video. I once opened a site where a woman started speaking something as soon as the site opened. It startled me and I closed it immediately. So don't let that happen. Correct use of flash will make the website attractive but too much of it might distract the visitors from the main goal. We do not want to do that.

3. Don't put a welcome page for more help visit to: www.great-links-toyour-website.com. where you have to click and enter your main page. Wasting time there might drive the visitors away.

4. The website shouldn't take a lot of time to load. Visitors might not have so much of patience and that means they'll leave your site immediately.

5. Unnecessary banners ads or links. Unless you are an advertiser, banner ads or link ads can drive potential customers away. Even if you have to do so use a pop-up to open a certain link, making sure the visitors still have your window open.

6. Avoid using colorful fonts, use of many fonts or use of unreadable fonts. As I said pleasant outlooks keeps the visitors hooked on your site.

7. Keep the color of links constant. The formal color for links is blue, underlined. If the color of the normal text and that of the link is same the visitors wouldn't know the difference.

8. Avoid using lot of graphics or images that are hard to load. Unless you are selling different products, do not use many graphics, images making you page hard to load.

9. Headline plays a significant role in attracting customers. For more detail go to: www.instant-video-streamer.com. Hence use catchy phrases for the headline, it'll work well.

10. The 10th and the most important is the content. Relevant content is the best way to keep the visitors hooked up and more over buy what you are selling. Correct use of words and sentences not only attracts the prospects but also helps the search engines to crawl it easily. Proper content, with relevant use of keywords is a MUST.

There are advantages to holding the reins however. You alone know exactly how you want your website to look, and it can be difficult trying to communicate that to another person. It's also easier to try out different combinations of items and different page layouts if you are designing it yourself.

Package Deal -affordable Website Design

I don't know about you, but when I hear "package deal" I hear variety. When I hear about different levels of package deals, with incrementing costs, my default assumption is that each package offers its own selection of ever-improving options. Naturally, I also expect that the package includes a greater amount of benefits obtained from previous packages. But you know, I could be wrong. Maybe what most people call a package deal I would call a value meal; the same selection of items at a higher price, with certain side benefits increased in quantity while the main part of the deal remains much the same. For more details www.29web-design-tricks.com. I can't help but think there's a tendency towards these sorts of packages after looking at a few sites that offered website design packages where the main improvement seemed to be the number of pages available. Am I missing something here? Myself, I've never understood the theory behind charging by the page number. Okay, sure, I understood it from a "hey, let's grab the maximum amount of money for the minimum amount of work" standpoint, but it always struck me as a really rather arbitrary method of pricing. Website designers have a tremendous variety of tools that they can use to create a layout that functions across multiple pages. CSS style sheets, php file functions, dynamic database page creation, external JavaScript files... Maybe I am missing something. Maybe these web designers are using template systems. That would make sense. The way those things lag, charging by the page begins to sound downright reasonable. I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of a web designer actually using a template system as their primary method of designing websites. Or maybe they are expected to write all the content? For help go to www.google-friendly-page.com. The cost per page for written content would make sense. Myself, though, I'd rather write the content for my business and let the web designer format, optimize, and upload it. It just seems to me that number of pages isn't a viable pricing method, and it is even less viable as a primary scaling benefit of a web design package. Complexity of coding, content creation, data entry, e-commerce, SEO...all very valid things to base a pricing structure on. Even hourly would make more sense if it wasn't for the fact that there is no way to keep track of hours spent. Getting back to my earlier analogy, taking your basic offer, adding more web pages, and calling it a package deal seems to me like asking the visitor to buy for the burger but pay by the French fry. You stick them all in the same vat of oil, toss on the same salt, put them all in the same carton, and it's done. At least with food you get a more filling meal. Huh, now there's an analogy for you. Additional Web Pages: The #1 Filler of Website Design Packages.

Web Design: Good Design Practices

Your website is where your business resides -- it's like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practise good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible. 

Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion. 

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size. 

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content. 

Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors. 

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that. 

Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

Advantages of Flash Web Design

In recent years, the custom flash web design has progressed to a magnitude leading to the replacement of the off shelf web-designing methods. The web designing companies in India have found the perfect way to build tutorials, market presentations, and multimedia websites by implementing the custom flash web design method. Many graphic and application designers find Flash to be user friendly. The graphic designers can enjoy having control on every part of their design and also can make the animation livelier.

Flash is generally used for building animated websites and clippings promoting products and services on the website. Features like professional flash website design, flash introduction, flash presentation, flash scripting, pictorial presentation, flash photo galleries, flash animated logo designs and flash animation are some of the main components that support the custom flash web design. Flash web design companies in India have mastered in producing small portfolio websites to large online shopping portals by blending well their creativity, professionalism and the latest custom flash web design technology.

Flash web design with a touch of static designing technique can result to spectacular presentation of the website. Different sectors of business can utilize the technique and possibly can create wonders to their business. While making corporate presentations, demos or tutorial, Flash with the support of audio and various user control options can make the product more interesting. However, critics of flash claim that flash websites do not use standard user-interfaces and sometimes it is not compatible to the common features of the browser. Nonetheless, if you want your website to have an impressive look and feel, you can apply flash web design while creating your website. It is an efficient way to leave an impression on the minds of the browsers visiting your website.

Difference Between a Web Designer and Web Developer

Believe me, I come across a lot of clients who have come to me after having been through many web designers and developers and are totally disillusioned with my industry. It's not an easy place to be after having been let down, cheated, ripped off, or manipulated. Often they sit in my office and look at me through skeptical eyes and understandably so! Most have spent thousands of dollars already in web development with not much to show for it or with a website that is not what they wanted.

It is unfortunate that this happens but as in any industry, there are people who promote honest and dishonest practices. more visit to :-www.instant-website-security.com Based on the information that I have gathered from clients and talking to other professionals within my field, there could be three major causes to having a bad or negative experience with your web designer or developer.

1. Personalities just do not blend. 

It's very important to find a web designer whom your personality best blends with. You will be working with this person for most likely a long time and if you don't feel you can work with this designer or developer from the initial start, it won't get better. There will be many decisions and suggestions you'll need to make on the road ahead so its crucial this relationship is one your comfortable with from the onset.

2. Not understanding the difference between a web designer and web developer.

There are essentially two breeds in the web world and both are very different from each other. The two titles are not interchangeable, really. Speaking in general, the web designer is the creative being that if skilled, can create beautiful designs and concepts for you. Clearly, this is a left brained thinker and would also be the more personable one of the two. Often however, a really good web designer can lack the technical skills to take their design concepts to the coding or development of a website. The web developer on the other hand, can be a highly skilled, more visite to :-www.instant-squeeze-page-mastery.com technical person and can take a design from start to final phase. However, the right brain developer lacks the creative skills to manifest beautiful designs and concepts. Because each have a weak area, they often contract the other to compensate for other. This is fine but what happens with the overall cost is passed down to the client. It's important to find a web designer/developer who is well rounded and able to do both equally well. You'll save time and money in the long run.

3. Lack of understanding about the Web Design process.

Unless you are a designer or developer, your not going to have a good knowledge of the flow and process it takes to design or develop a website. But at the same time, your web professional should assist you in helping you understand the process by educating you along the way. This is where trusting your web professional is important. You need to be able to trust him or her knowing that they have the best interest for your website. Too often, a lack of understanding causes misunderstandings and opens the door to future problems.

Doing your homework and interviewing several web designers or developers is a must before you employ anyone with your website. You will be investing a good amount of money for a website and its critical to find someone whom you can trust and will be able to work with for the long haul. Having a web professional who is local in proximity is good but if you are able to find someone who meets the three factors listed above, then its perfectly fine to have a web designer or developer from a remote location. Just make sure that he or she is always accessible either by phone or email.

Because the web jargon can be confusing, it is easy for you as the customer to be manipulated. Be cautious and always ask for an explanation that you can understand. I believe the need to find good, honest, ethical web professionals will continue to rise. Christian web design and hosting companies are often sought after because those seeking them already have a preconceived notion in the type of ethics and character of a Christian website designer. Its good to work with others who share in the same belief system as you and that work and service is done at a higher standard.

Most Christian web design companies offer hosting as well as design & development services. It is always a good idea to host your website with your design firm if that is available. This way, the designer can work more efficiently since they are already familiar with their hosting servers. Finding Christian web design & Hosting will be worth the effort!

Affordable Small Business Web Design

As small business owners ourselves, we fully appreciate the special needs small companies have when developing a profitable online business. Working together as a team, we provide a full line of online web services to help ensure the success of your internet company.

Building a powerful online presence involves much more than simply having a website designed. As you may have already discovered, following the steps to internet success can at times be somewhat overwhelming. Resources to find answers specific to your online business concerns are at best limited. GNC Web Creations goes far beyond just designing you site. We provide full service web design, including, but not limited to:

• Small Business Planning 
  
• Domain Name Consultation 
  
• Custom Website Creations 
  
• Custom Graphic Web Design Services 
  
• Basic Search Engine Optimization 
  
• Search Engine Website Submission
  

Motorcycle Website Design

Active sponsors of Dream Riders Biking for Children and Harley Davidson owners ourselves, we appreciate the online business needs of motorcycle enthusiasts. Whether you are looking for a complete redesign of a current site or development of your motorcycle website from the ground floor up, we are committed to doing our best to exceed your expectations.

Texas Web Design

As small business owner myself, I truly appreciate the needs small companies have when creating and developing a profitable online business. 

Whether you have a traditional business that is looking to expand your business to the web, a small business that hasn't yet seen the results you had hoped for online, or a home based business just getting started, my focus is on finding specific solutions to your online challenges.

Our affordable website services are set up to make it easy for you to choose the exact level of assistance you need to reach your online goals, from occasional hourly consulting to full service business planning and online training. We have the service solution that can be customized to fit your specific needs.

With our good old fashioned small town approach to personalized service, you can count on our commitment to exceed your expectations.

andy Hints for Web Designers

Web Designing is as easy as 1-2-3, claim some of the software tools on the market that "generate" your pages for you. Unfortunately, many web designers today have fallen prey to this marketing gimmick - and the results are obvious. Every now and then, one comes across a website that looks good with a particular browser and a particular screen-resolution; but view it with a different browser, and you can't even read the plain text on the page. Worse still, given the number of operating systems that are used by netizens worldwide, these pages will never be seen properly by more than a half of the intended surfers.

Tips to Create Your Own Web Pages

If you want to create your own web page but are not sure where to begin, the steps below will help. It's easy to create your own web page once you understand the basics. You might not become a "master-mind" web programmer, but you can still create a website on your own that functions properly. You can even sell products or services from your web page. It's easier than you think! 

Step 1: Basic HTML

Take a few beginner courses about basic HTML before you begin to create your own web page. Even if you use a free "What You See is What You Get" program such as Netscape Composer or NVU, you will still benefit tremendously from knowing a little about HTML. The WYSIWYG program will convert your design into HTML for you, but there will come a time when you will need a working knowledge of HTML to add codes or forms, or to make minor changes to your web page.

Step 2: WYSIWYG Course

Once you get a foundational knowledge of HTML, take a beginner's webmaster course designed specifically for the web design program you choose. This will help you learn how to put it all together on a web page so it will flow. You'll be able to create your own web page to get the look and feel you want for your website. 

Step 3: Understand the Main Features of a Web Page

When you create your own web page, you'll realize quickly that what you see online when you visit a company's web page is not what it looks like behind the scenes. The outline of how all the sections fit together is often hidden. 

Below is a brief list and description of the main features of a web page so you'll know what to expect when you begin designing.

a. Tables: Tables help you to organize as you create your own web page. They are divided into rows,columns and cells, and each section can be sized all different sizes to get the look and feel you want.

b. Logo and Images: The website logo is usually placed at the top of the web page on every page of the website. It brands the company and helps users to recognize the company name. Other images called clipart, banners, buttons, or graphics, are placed strategically throughout the web pages to enhance the site's design. As you create your own web page, you'll want to use images wisely as they can either help or hurt your overall design. If you are the adventurous type, you can even create your own business logo or a personal logo for your website.

c. Text: Text is the writing you see on a web page, or the site's main copy. Most website owners place their text in or near the middle of the web page on a white background to make it easier to read. When you create your own web page, always use white or a light color such as pale yellow in areas where much reading is required.

d. Hyperlinks or Links: Links are the images or underlined text you click on to visit another web page. Some links are not underlined, but most designers use the underline feature to make the links noticeable. Also, graphics can be linked to other pages as well. Think ahead of where you would like to place your links before you create your own web page. You'll want to be organized from the start!

e. Image Maps: Image maps are navigational menus that are embedded within an image. It's an interactive image with several components within that are interactive as well.

f. Navigation Menus: A navigation menu is a group of stand-alone links that visitors use to navigate your website. When creating your own website, you may put a menu at the top (below the logo) or bottom (above the footer), left column or right column of your web page.

g. Forms: Forms are useful in many ways. You can use forms for allowing your customers to log-in to a private area of your site or sign up subscribers for your e-zine. You can also use forms for gathering information and taking orders. When you're ready to create your own web site, you can build the site generically at first, and then find the codes and instructions for certain types of forms online as you need them. Many are available free or at low cost.

**NOTE: If your website will be totally interactive or include many forms and a private log-in user section, you might consider learning the PHP programming design so you can add all these features and update them easily.

h. Search: A search feature is useful on websites with lots of products or information. It makes it easier for your site users to find certain subjects within your site pages.

i. Footers: Footers are simply company information you want to include at the very bottom of your web pages. You may include a contact email, your company name, your own name, your company address, and a phone number. It depends on how much information you wish to make known to your visitors. Another good idea is to place a "Copyright" statement at the bottom of every page when you create your own web pages. 

You probably will not learn how to design all of the above features from the start. It will take practice with the basics before you're ready to move on to more complicated features. But remember, you can create your own web page using just a few of the features above and still have a great website within only a few weeks! 

 

Building Your Own Simple Web Site

One of the reasons behind this is because simple Web design has become easier than ever for your average laymen to do. 

Although Web developers still build the best web pages, there are many preexisting build your own website templates that can make the process quite easy.

About Amateur Web Design Technicians

These wannabe amateur web designers need to understand that you can – and should – have it both ways. 

A business needs to have affordable web site design that is also high quality web site design. Otherwise, they are just shooting themselves in the foot.

Programs for Web Design

Web design programs make it so easy to get your web page off the ground that many people will not even pay a professional for cheap web site design any more. They feel like they are being ripped off if they do not do it by themselves.

Although I can appreciate this do-it-yourself sentiment, it still makes sense for serious businesses to hire a web developer. Just because you can design your own web page does not mean that you have the skills, the knowledge, or the technical savvy to do it well. 

On the contrary, many of the greatest champions of affordable web site design have some of the worst web pages that you have ever seen. They will have broken links, bad layout, flash applets that do not work, and poor user interface.

Designing Your Website

As web design becomes cheaper and cheaper, people are willing to pay less and less money for it. It has gotten to the point where, for many people, the most affordable web site design is the design that they do themselves.

The Best Web Design by You

If you decide on a do-it-yourself project, again, follow the advice for the best web site design strategies and techniques and practices. Your site, that is, should be highly accessible (and there are standards and tricks for making it so), and equally usable (aka user friendly, with fonts, colors, and content appropriate and accessible for target audiences). 

At the same time, the best web site design does not include any sneaky, underhanded, or internet illegal material or technique. It must not have hidden urls, cannot be loaded down with keywords, etc. or it will be blacklisted, booted from the directories such as Google and Yahoo.

You can learn more about designing your own website by going here. Now, I hope you are a little more savvy about the best web design options. Now, go and build your website!

Web Design Promises

Another thing to watch for is the designer who includes a promise to make your pages so kwr (keyword rich) that they will rank #1 on the search engines! 

First, if they are advertising to anyone other than you, how are they making hundreds of websites #1? That would make for a very crowded rank space. 

Second, they do not know what they are doing/saying, as search engines do not all crawl the web using keywords as their primary grasping element. Some search by other measures, looking at, for example, relevance. 

And, third, again, the person offering the best web design might be rating the work by criteria in his/her favor, not by the standards. 

So if you go to the professionals for the best web site design, you are smart to study the gurus, the internationally renowned, experienced, respected, and proven experts

 

Professional IT Services

Before I knew how to use even the most basic of web design program, I would often hire out for a company to build my websites. They would ask me all of the essential questions, and come up with a very good picture of just what it was that I wanted for my website. 

Then they would go ahead and build me one, using the latest web design program, which fulfilled my needs admirably. Although it could become quite expensive, it was worth it, because the website would more than pay for itself by having online exposure for my own business. I could not have done without my website.

You can learn more about designing your own website by going here. Now, I hope you are a little more savvy about the best web design options. Now, go and build your website!

Professional Web Design Programs

Nonetheless, if you are serious about being an IT professional, or even if you are simply someone who finds a good bit of use for web designing building skills in your daily life, studying in a professional web design program can really be a welcome boost to your career. It can help you get the most that you can out of your web designing software, which is really a boon. 

I know. Before I graduated from an online web design program, I would waste hours and hours of time doing things in backwards, inefficient ways because I did not know the best way to put together my web pages. Now I can get the most out of my web programming time, and I owe it all to my web design program.

 

Why Bother with a Professional Web Design Program?

You do not have to be a web designer to get a website up and running, and in fact many experts believe that the majority of current web pages are put up by people who have never studied in a formal web design program.

 

Creativity Vs Money

The only, and I would like to believe logical, conclusion I came to was that people who had nothing to lose immersed themselves in their work. It was only when they started seeking rewards other than the satisfaction of a job well done that their work suffered and ceased to be of the same quality as before. That my friends is the truth not just about about amazing designs, but about any labor of love.

Amazing Designs are Only Half the Story

I finally did find someone after a little bit of a searching. I commissioned him to create some amazing designs for me. While I would love to say that everything worked out really well, that was not the case. I mean the designs were amazing all right. But he took so long to deliver them that I nearly had to postpone the opening of my new store. But when they did come in, everyone who saw them said that they were surely worth the wait.

 The experience set me thinking. I mean when there were so many freshers who produced the most amazing designs, why were there so many professionals whose designs lacked the passion? What happened to the raw talent when it came into contact with money that it seemed to fizzle out and die? Where were some of the more reputed names more interested in branding themselves and their portfolios rather than doing a good job for their clients?

Simple Does Not Work for All Web Design Projects

Of course, not every application demands simple web pages. If you run a special effects studio, a design firm, or some other highly artistic practice, you might want to go for flash instead of minimalism. As long as you can make it looks slick, it can be a great idea to take advantage of the high speed of the modern Internet to make your graphics really pop. 

You might want to play around a bit with different ideas before you hire a professional. Sometimes, this is the best way to figure out what you really need to meet your requirements.

 You can learn more about designing your own website by going here. Now, I hope you are a little more savvy about the best web design options. Now, go and build your website!

Do It Yourself or Professional Web Designer?

Of course, even if you want simple web designs, you still might consider hiring a professional. Even a simple web page will benefit from the stylistic flourishes that a professional designer can give it. 

Like in any other business, professionals still get better results than amateurs. Many web programmers contract on a per project basis, so if you have a simple Web design in mind it can be particularly affordable. They will work with you to implement a project, following your design ideas and suggesting improvements when they see them.

Designing Your Website

As web design becomes cheaper and cheaper, people are willing to pay less and less money for it. It has gotten to the point where, for many people, the most affordable web site design is the design that they do themselves.

Programs for Web Design

Web design programs make it so easy to get your web page off the ground that many people will not even pay a professional for cheap web site design any more. They feel like they are being ripped off if they do not do it by themselves.

Although I can appreciate this do-it-yourself sentiment, it still makes sense for serious businesses to hire a web developer. Just because you can design your own web page does not mean that you have the skills, the knowledge, or the technical savvy to do it well. 

On the contrary, many of the greatest champions of affordable web site design have some of the worst web pages that you have ever seen. They will have broken links, bad layout, flash applets that do not work, and poor user interface.

Concerning Web Site Design with Flash

This is especially true if you are using flash web site design. It is possible to make your own affordable web site design for simple web pages that consist mostly of text and links, but once the applications become complex, it is time to bring in a professional. Believe it or not, you can find affordable web site designers for almost any need. 

 

There are so many web designers out there right now that many are willing to give you a deal just to get some work! It will not cost you an arm and a leg, and it will make your page look better and your business, more professional.

Of course, not all affordable web site designs are the same. Just because someone promises you affordable web site design does not mean that you should hire him. There is no formal certification program for web professionals. 

 He may not know any more about website design than you do! Find someone to do affordable web site design with a body of work that you like. Insist on seeing a portfolio before you hire him! If you are uncertain, ask for references.

5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website's Legibility

Websites that make their customers work to read them are not the best way to get business. Miniscule fonts, text in colors that make it hard to see against the background color, and lines that are piled on top of each other are problems, but they're easy to correct. Let's jump right in and look at five easy fixes: 

1. Format your text using CSS.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the way to go - use one style sheet and control how text looks on your entire site. Make a change to the style sheet and your whole site is updated. It makes life a lot simpler. 

2. Make the font size big enough to read.

Consider your target audience. Even if they are a group of teenage girls looking for new shoes, it's never a good idea to use tiny type. It doesn't have to be enormous, but up to a point, larger type is better. 12-pt Verdana is better than 8-pt Verdana. 

3. Make the text contrast with its background.

The more contrast, the better. Black-on-white or white-on-black are examples of the highest contrast you can get. Use colors if you like, but if you squint at the page and your text basically vanishes, there's not enough contrast. 

4. Give the lines room to breathe.

Don't stack lines on top of each other. Use the line-spacing directive in CSS and give it some space; I'll often set line-spacing to 140% of the height of a typical line. 

5. Break text up into chunks.

No matter how good a writer you are, people don't want to read endless pages of text. Break it up by using headlines that reflect the subject of the paragraph(s) to follow so people can scan down to the parts that really interest them, or use bulleted lists to change the pace of the writing and slow down the scanning. 

And finally (not one of the 5 Easy Ways to Improve Legibility but still quite important) check your spelling. Nothing irritates me more on a web page than spelling errors - it simply makes you look like you don't care enough to get it right. Use that ubiquitous spellcheck tool. 

Making your website's content more legible is easy. It doesn't take a lot of time, mainly common sense. The payoff will be text that's more readable, customers that stick around long enough to get your message, and improved credibility with your visitors.

Handy Hints for Web Designers

Web Designing is as easy as 1-2-3, claim some of the software tools on the market that "generate" your pages for you. Unfortunately, many web designers today have fallen prey to this marketing gimmick - and the results are obvious. Every now and then, one comes across a website that looks good with a particular browser and a particular screen-resolution; but view it with a different browser, and you can't even read the plain text on the page. Worse still, given the number of operating systems that are used by netizens worldwide, these pages will never be seen properly by more than a half of the intended surfers. 

Now let's assume that this web page belongs to a site that sells stuff online. The very fact that half the users cannot even see the page, translates into losses worth half the amount straightaway (perhaps, even more!) I guess that makes a good case for the raison d'être of this article! Web Designing is, in my opinion, a cocktail of creative skills & technical prowess – and one is no less important than the other. 

In the following lines, I have jotted down a few points that I noticed during my online journeys, important from the point of view of web designers. Some of them may be taken with a pinch of salt; for it is not possible to please everyone everytime. But most of them are simple enough to be used as a rule of thumb. 

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. A picture file, alas, is also almost as big. Images, no doubt, enhance the look of a page, but it is not advisable to go overboard in stuffing your page with a truckload of images. Most net-surfers use a dial-up connection, and the average time to load a page should be no longer than 5 seconds. If it's longer, the surfer will most probably click away elsewhere. So, within this time, all the images on a page must be loaded as well. So, as a rough yardstick, keep the aggregate page size less than 30k. 

Another important point to note is that each file on the page requires a separate HTTP request to the server. So a lot of small images - even if they do not add up to a lot in terms of bytes - will slow down the loading a lot. 

Even when you must use images for navigation, please give a second thought to the users who will not be seeing those jazzy, fantastic & truly amazing buttons that you spent hours to design. Yes, I'm talking of the ALT text attribute of the IMG tag. Do not forget to provide an Alternate Text for each image that you use for navigation. (It may be left blank for certain images that are purely for aesthetic reasons, but let that be an exception, rather than the rule.) Though not obviously apparent, ALT text can help such users immensely. 

Modern browsers offer users a choice to turn off images. This gives an idea of how troublesome the unwanted images could be. 

A couple of more attributes that make your pages load faster are the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes. Without these, the browser must wait for the image to download since it cannot know how much space to leave for them! 

Navigability & functionality come before artistic excellence. It is no use making your site a masterpiece of art if users cannot navigate around it - even after they reach the main page, they have no clue as to how to go where they want to go. 

Especially common, is a kind of navigation that some people call Mystery Meat Navigation. That means, that unless your mouse moves over an image, you have no idea where that link might take you. Only when the mouse hovers do you see the actual link. This is cumbersome because users need to move their mouse all over the place to find out which part is a link and which is not. 

Follow the K.I.S.S. principle: Keep it simple, stupid! 

Next is a very important practical suggestion: whenever your whole page is within a TABLE, the page cannot render (i.e., the page does not show on the screen) unless the entire table is downloaded. You might have noticed this on several websites, when there is no activity for a long time, and suddenly the entire page is visible. Hence, to avoid such a situation, what you should do is this: Split the table up into two tables one below the other, and let the top one be a short table that displays just the page header and a few navigation links. So now, immediately upon downloading this part of the page, users can see the page header – and this prepares them for the long wait ahead, as well as keeps them from leaving your site to go to other sites, in case of a slow connection. 

The ongoing browser wars have left only one casualty – the user. As a word of caution, stay away from all browser-specific functions. Because if a certain feature is supported by one browser, it will most definitely not be supported by another. Where you must use such features, it should not hamper the display of the page in the other browser which does not support such functionality. In other words, your page should degrade gracefully. 

Creating a new browser window should be the authority of the user only. Do not try to popup new windows to clutter the user's screen. All links must open in the same window by default. An exception, however, may be made for pages containing a links list. It is convenient in such cases to open links in another window, so that the user can come back to the links page easily. Even in such cases, it is advisable to give the user a prior note that links would open in a new window. 

Keep in mind the fonts-challenged users too. The ultra-jazzy "Cloister Black MT Light" font that looks so amazing on your machine may well be degraded into plain old Times New Roman on your user's machine. The reason? He/she does not have the font installed on his/her machine - and one thing's obvious - there's nothing you can do about the situation, sitting halfway across the globe from them. 

Stay clear of out-of-the-way hard-to-find fonts. Use plain vanilla fonts like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Courier. If need be, make your jazzy fonts into an image and put that on the page. (and while you're there, do not forget Tip #1.) 

A new design trick that is increasingly being used on the web has caught my fancy: It is a very functional navigation bar that guides you across all possible paths within the site. It looks something like this: 

Home > Section > Subsection > Page 

What better than to give your users a handy way of visiting just about any other page on your own site, and informing them where they are! 

Another new trend on the web is not all that inviting - various vendors come up with "revolutionary plug-ins" and undoubtedly, most amateur web designers jump up to spruce up their pages using them. The reality is that most people won't have them installed, and wouldn't care about it anyway. Come to think of it, have you seen plug-ins on any of the most popular sites, including Yahoo.com, Amazon.com or Google.com? It's simply not the best thing to do. Mention must be made here of Macromedia's Shockwave Flash plug-in, which has now made its way onto most computers today, and thus presents no harm in using vector animation on your site. 

Java is yet another often-misused technology on webpages. Use Java as a utilitarian programming language, not as a graphics front-end for your photos/images. There are various things you can do with Java; that does not mean you should do all of them. Java applets are known to run slower, so users experience a certain sluggishness in performance. And worse still, Java has been known to crash certain browsers. This is not something everyone likes, especially if it is done for the sole purpose of showing a set of images in a slideshow! 

The moral: Use it, but with discretion. 

Never underestimate the importance of those META tags. They can make all the difference between your users coming to your site and going to your competitor's – just because they couldn't find yours. Search Engines heavily rely upon the Keywords & Description Meta tags to populate their search database. And once again, use discretion in writing these. Including a huge number of keywords for the same page can spell trouble. The description should be a small, meaningful summary of the whole page that makes sense even when seen out-of-context of the webpage itself, say, in a listing of search engine results. 

And the final point that summarizes all the points so forth: Write for all browsers, all resolutions, and all color-depths. If you show people pages that look best with their own browser and their own resolution, that makes them feel "at home", and you get a better response. Compare this with a website that proclaims "Viewed best with Browser X at a resolution of 1024x768." I'll give you a choice between two options when you see such a page: download the suggested browser (which might well be over 50 Megs), then go get a new monitor that supports the high-resolution, and then adjust your screen setting so you get the perfect picture. Or simply click away to another site. Which do you prefer?

Font Styles in your web pages

There are many subtle aspects that can make a web page and a web site look messy or amateurish, one of these is too many fonts on the page. 

A time honored page layout rule is that a page should have no more than two fonts appearing, otherwise the aforementioned ‘badness’ will creep in. Whenever you’re not sure about something, it is always a good idea to try it and then to try it in opposite extremes. 

So in this case, that means that you should break out your HTML editor (whether it be Notepad or a wysiwyg like Dreamweaver) and create two simple HTML pages. In one page use only one font and in the other use many fonts (5 for example). Be sure to use to same text on both pages (cut and paste some text from some website or even this article would be fine…) and see for yourself how well each reads. I am sure you will find the page with only one font looks much better and is much easier to read. 

 

Unfortunately there are only a few fonts that are sure to be supported with most people's browsers (tools like Dreamweaver give you the list to choose from) so you have to get used to these limitations unless you: 

Create all your text elements with gifs… a bad idea.

Get into font embedding available for Netscape and IE.

Use a supported font for the majority of your text and use GIF’s for headlines in your preferred font.

Your first option is not a good idea for several reasons:

You’re effectively killing yourself on the search engines. Search engines can’t read your gif images. You could use the alt attribute of the image tag, but that is really meant for short descriptions only, as they will disappear after a few seconds. 

Using gifs will make your site a pain to update, imagine you need to change the spelling of a word or two? Now you would have to go into your image editing software and fix the spelling error and export in out again. If this same text was in HTML all you would have to do is pop open the HTML file and make the change, much easier. 

You would lose a big advantage of HTML: automatic reformatting of the text. One of HTML’s greatest strengths is that it will constantly restructure itself as its text is manipulated. This is something we take for granted, but really makes life easy especially with long documents. So as you edit the text, removing lines or words, etc. … you will get an immediate glance at the way the document looks. 

Now that we are pretty sure that text as gifs (or any image format) is not a good idea let’s move onto option #2, font embedding. 

Option #2:

There is technology out there that allows you to embed the fonts with the HTML document. This process is a little esoteric, can have problems, and is barely used, so I would advise to not use it unless you are creating the website for internal use in, say, a large company's intranet. 

Besides, the available fonts (especially Verdana) are nice looking and are a good choice for body text. I wanted to mention the font embed option just so that you know that this option exists. 

But just in case there are some out there who really want to try it, you should check out this article on embedding fonts. 

Option #3:

This is your best bet and this is what you commonly see, because it is your best bet! :) Choose one of the browser supported fonts and then set the feel for your page or website with a font that you will use for headline text only. You will find that by doing this you can achieve the results you want and stay true to smart web design rules. 

Summary: 

Fonts do play a big role in setting the stage for your web pages, so they should be carefully selected; a font that would be great on, say, a site that sells toys would probably not work on a site that deals with engineering products. With that in mind, we have to remember that too many fonts will confuse the reader, make the pages look disorganized and you’ll probably lose readers as a result.

General tips for new web designers

Web site designers today have plenty of options in terms of tools and technologies they can use to build their web pages. Many questions come up: should we use Flash, do we need database driven web pages, do we need a shopping cart for our e-commerce web site etc ...

This article takes a step back and deals with some of the fundamental questions/issues in web site design.


1. Do not use framesets in your web sites: They are not required in most cases and framesets will kill you with search engines.

2. Do not use a 'heavy' background in your web pages that distracts the users from what you are trying to present to them and makes the text hard to read. Remember what you are trying to do with your website, and I think for most, it is not trying to impress people with some tacky background tile. Keep it easy to read; there is a reason why solid colored text on a solid colored backgrounds are used often on web pages and in print.

3. Use sharp clear pictures: This is really important, a good looking web page can be made with just one clear sharp image and at the same time, the best looking web page can be made to look bad with just one crappy image.

4. Get sharp clear copy of your logo: If you are a company, you want to look professional so that people have confidence in giving you their money, a crappy looking logo isn’t going to do it.

5. Avoid the IE page transitions: IE (Internet Explorer) can create many special effects, things like page transitions (page wipes, etc. …) are tempting and may be suitable sometimes, but for 99% of web sites they are not.

6. Avoid the flying text: Again, the decision whether or not to do this has much to do with the content of your web pages, but it should be clear that for most websites this would not be a good thing.

7. If you are trying to sell something, having live credit card processing will increase your sales substantially. Sometimes when people want to start selling online they avoid the perceived trouble of hooking up with a credit card processing service because of the programming required. This is a big mistake, studies have clearly shown that web pages that provide credit card processing in their e-commerce enabled web pages (web pages that sell stuff) have much greater conversions.

Above all, make the web site pages no more than 60-70k (I shoot for 50k) if you can, and keep things very simple so your clients have an easy time finding things. You can help this along by strategically making use of the browsers caching capabilities.

In a nutshell: your web-browser will reuse images that it has loaded. So (if for example) if you have an image on your 1st page that you also use on 2 other pages in your website, this image only gets downloaded once by the browser and subsequent times the browser will automatically load a copy of the image it has from its own cache. This can really speed up things from the surfer's point of view and also saves you bandwidth.