Several online businesses fail because of the fact that they neglect to plan on their website design . Planning on your web site to make it profit-driven is of the essential. After all, your web site will serve to represent your business in the online community.
There are 3 essential steps that are necessary in building a website design that produces profit: determining the purpose of your web site, identifying ideal customers or market, and producing a website design that sets you apart from competition.
During the first step, your purpose includes what you aim to achieve with your web site. For online businesses, you might use your web site as a means to sell your products or services. This purpose will help impact the planning method of your web site design. You must come up with ways in which you can establish credibility for your web site in order for potential customers to be draw in towards your business. Unless you are able to establish that sense of credibility, then no customers will learn to trust in you such that they'd be willing to do business.
Still focused on the purpose, your website design must not only consist of an appealing page layout but also compelling content. Articles or contents published on your web site are one of your strongest points in building customer trust and loyalty. Hence, you need to work on producing quality content. However, when you have attained that level of quality, you need to remain consistent with all marketing campaigns and efforts you do for your web site.
Another essential factor to take into account when creating a profitable website design is the prospected customers or market. Which particular demographic are you trying to target your website? One common mistake committed by most online business web sites is trying to cater for everybody. An effective web site that is able to produce profit is one that focuses on a given market who are more likely to avail of your products or services. This impacts the message you convey in your web site and also some other factors in the website design such as color scheme, size of text used, or other features such as Flash animations or other programs.
One key element that has helped propel several online businesses to success is uniqueness. Since the internet is made up of several web sites that offer the same information or business, you need to be able to convince potential customers what you can offer them that your competitors haven't already had. Creating a website design that distinguishes you from the others is your best ticket to increased profits.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Gateway to Web Design
For any web designer there are the three top priorities viz. Content, Hosting, Web domains. How experienced they are is of less concern, as there are dozens of companies offering the "same" packages for different prices. It can get mind boggling to figure out the appropriate steps, with an overflow of routes you could take. For a smooth path, instructions are essential.
What are your current goals is the first thing you should make a list of. Secure and reliable host is required for running a professional site. You should find a web hosting package that includes extra bandwidth if you know that your website will reach thousands of people within a few months. If visitors are constantly going to be accessing your website you will need additional space. You should stick to the free hosting packages if you are just experimenting. There are basic package available in the market, which will leave you satisfied. If you aren't serious about the website in the long run you do not need bells and whistles. You can always switch services and transfer your website, if you do end up changing your mind.
You need to find a reputable service, once you have made your decision; it often stems bad results while searching for hosting companies on Google. It is not 100% safe and legit because it is listed on a search engine. You should always get a second opinion, if found a potential company. For detailed discussions of matter it is usually smart to join a web designer related forums. This way you can be safeguard with the experience of other people and what other companies take steps to avoid. Additional references from family or friends would also be extremely good.
Through internet you can acquire the discount coupon codes, which will also help you with your initial fee. It is absolutely crucial to make sure you find a legit business due to the fact that you have to include your private information. Their name should be in Google and check out the reviews from fellow users.
Web hosting doesn't have to be difficult or even too time consuming for website beginners. There should be no frustrations or yearlong debates on which company to choose, with these instructions in mind.
What are your current goals is the first thing you should make a list of. Secure and reliable host is required for running a professional site. You should find a web hosting package that includes extra bandwidth if you know that your website will reach thousands of people within a few months. If visitors are constantly going to be accessing your website you will need additional space. You should stick to the free hosting packages if you are just experimenting. There are basic package available in the market, which will leave you satisfied. If you aren't serious about the website in the long run you do not need bells and whistles. You can always switch services and transfer your website, if you do end up changing your mind.
You need to find a reputable service, once you have made your decision; it often stems bad results while searching for hosting companies on Google. It is not 100% safe and legit because it is listed on a search engine. You should always get a second opinion, if found a potential company. For detailed discussions of matter it is usually smart to join a web designer related forums. This way you can be safeguard with the experience of other people and what other companies take steps to avoid. Additional references from family or friends would also be extremely good.
Through internet you can acquire the discount coupon codes, which will also help you with your initial fee. It is absolutely crucial to make sure you find a legit business due to the fact that you have to include your private information. Their name should be in Google and check out the reviews from fellow users.
Web hosting doesn't have to be difficult or even too time consuming for website beginners. There should be no frustrations or yearlong debates on which company to choose, with these instructions in mind.
Importance of Web Design and Development Services for your Business
The performance of a website in front of a visitor is not different from a physical business outlet in a market. As you dress up and make up your business in real times to attract more and more customers in order to increase your sales, same is the requirement of your website. The success of today’s business relies on the consistency of their online and offline representations. A website which is far and inconsistent from its real business nature is more likely to go towards the failure.
Web Design and Development Services play a key role in website performance. The key basis to rate a website are its layout and color scheme, its overall functionality and its standings in the major search engines. Web Design services consist of website redesign, logo designing, flash animations based web design, brochure design, and website templates. In web development section a numerous services are surfacing on the website arena. For example web application development, website maintenance and upgrading, shopping cart solutions, ecommerce solutions and crm solutions. Another segment in web services is internet marketing which is very significant from the aspect of website visibility to users. Internet Marketing lists Seo search engine optimization, PPC pay per click management and affiliate marketing.
It is possible that you design and develop your website yourself but it is not recommended as a suitable choice. In that sense you may not even stand with your competitors. You can make your website enlarge in the market with spending a little.
Web design and development services always have a tendency to reduce the consciousness of webmasters. Their consciousness based on some reasons.
• Their view is to maximize their sales and minimize the cost.
• They want their website to look best from every view so that it can leave the lasting and splendid sketch in the users mind.
• They want their website to be unique and present an impression that brings back the visitor again and again.
• Each of the type of business requires unusual and more specialty in the attraction and theme of website design.
For instance websites that have older people as their target customers, show the design simple and information easily accessible and a website selling baby clothes matches the mind of babies and have some rich look.
Web services ensure the quality of website from a number of points. For example:
• Website presents a clear look and idea about the domain you want your customer to pull in the mind.
• Website behaves as user friendly and contains all the essential options for all types of users, for example print page option, search option and contact us etc.
• Website menus are easy and simple to navigate even operated by a child.
In web services internet marketing enables the website to make entrance in search engines directory. Website achieves higher possibility to be listed in the top of search engine result pages.
• As web design and development services arise the website visibility from all sides at the same time it reduces the efforts of maintenance.
• In web services internet marketing enhances the references of website in search engines. Its contents are targeted into the segment of only those visitors who have the interest in the product.
• You can promote your website with marketing programs. Affiliate marketing can minimize your cost and increase profit ratio if you are running online business.
• Web services can make brand awareness very easy and simple. Internet marketing services gives you the best value for your money.
As more and more businesses are launching their websites it is now believed about a business who are running websites more and more updated. Web design and development services are utilized by a lot of webmasters in recent times. Web design and development services are that’s why molding the industries to increase their online presence and make them potential across the borders. If you are looking to make your business more refine, more attractive and more visible in the world, the time is to go for website designing and development services.
Web Design and Development Services play a key role in website performance. The key basis to rate a website are its layout and color scheme, its overall functionality and its standings in the major search engines. Web Design services consist of website redesign, logo designing, flash animations based web design, brochure design, and website templates. In web development section a numerous services are surfacing on the website arena. For example web application development, website maintenance and upgrading, shopping cart solutions, ecommerce solutions and crm solutions. Another segment in web services is internet marketing which is very significant from the aspect of website visibility to users. Internet Marketing lists Seo search engine optimization, PPC pay per click management and affiliate marketing.
It is possible that you design and develop your website yourself but it is not recommended as a suitable choice. In that sense you may not even stand with your competitors. You can make your website enlarge in the market with spending a little.
Web design and development services always have a tendency to reduce the consciousness of webmasters. Their consciousness based on some reasons.
• Their view is to maximize their sales and minimize the cost.
• They want their website to look best from every view so that it can leave the lasting and splendid sketch in the users mind.
• They want their website to be unique and present an impression that brings back the visitor again and again.
• Each of the type of business requires unusual and more specialty in the attraction and theme of website design.
For instance websites that have older people as their target customers, show the design simple and information easily accessible and a website selling baby clothes matches the mind of babies and have some rich look.
Web services ensure the quality of website from a number of points. For example:
• Website presents a clear look and idea about the domain you want your customer to pull in the mind.
• Website behaves as user friendly and contains all the essential options for all types of users, for example print page option, search option and contact us etc.
• Website menus are easy and simple to navigate even operated by a child.
In web services internet marketing enables the website to make entrance in search engines directory. Website achieves higher possibility to be listed in the top of search engine result pages.
• As web design and development services arise the website visibility from all sides at the same time it reduces the efforts of maintenance.
• In web services internet marketing enhances the references of website in search engines. Its contents are targeted into the segment of only those visitors who have the interest in the product.
• You can promote your website with marketing programs. Affiliate marketing can minimize your cost and increase profit ratio if you are running online business.
• Web services can make brand awareness very easy and simple. Internet marketing services gives you the best value for your money.
As more and more businesses are launching their websites it is now believed about a business who are running websites more and more updated. Web design and development services are utilized by a lot of webmasters in recent times. Web design and development services are that’s why molding the industries to increase their online presence and make them potential across the borders. If you are looking to make your business more refine, more attractive and more visible in the world, the time is to go for website designing and development services.
Web Design tips that come handy for a designer working on any kind of website design.
A good web design is considered to be the prime face value for selling your products to many online users. This is why the website design market would always stay hot and happening. There might be many web designing companies offering their services at considerable low prices but finding a good designer is something that does not happen very often. Many times this results in poor quality designs which bring in nothing but poor business. The many forecasted customers come through online presence and when such customers see a poorly designed website they just frown and turn over to the next company in line.
Great looking website is the main formula for the success of many online businesses that plan out huge strategies to attract customers. Companies invest a lot of time, effort and money in understanding their audience so they can stay abreast with their competitors. This is the main reason why many companies go for the complete overhaul of their website design. They are ready to invest in the most expensive designer in the market to get most superior results. They spend many hours into reviewing the homepage over and again as it is like the cover of the book which matters the most. An online visitor spends most of his/her time on the homepage of various website so the one that has the best web design clicks for the user and this is what brings in one new customers for the business that gave importance to its home page designing. So keep in mind that the home page is the most crucial. It implies for any real world entity. If the design is not good then it appeal to the user and he would never put in his money to buy that product. So make your home page design the most appealing and see your customer base grow at a very healthy rate.
Apart from this the ease of navigation incorporated in the website design is what makes a website highly user friendly and thus bringing in more traffic day by day. If a user spends more than a minute too look for a particular section on your website then he would surely move on to the next website as the web design would fail to impress him in the first place by not showing him what he is looking for. So make sure that your menus follow the standards and principles of good web designing. A designer who is good at his works knows how to bring out the best website in terms of navigations. He places all the right menus and the right links at the right places for the user to access. Also the bread crumb approach is something that proves to be highly beneficial in this aspect.
Most of the times you might have all the right ingredients in your website but you just need a good designer to set everything right. The key in having a good website design to understand your audience well and then have a web design that is both user friendly as well as appealing to your prospective customers. Bring in more clarity for your overall business through a great website and see your customer's trust rise in you to bring in more profits and reputation through the online world.
Great looking website is the main formula for the success of many online businesses that plan out huge strategies to attract customers. Companies invest a lot of time, effort and money in understanding their audience so they can stay abreast with their competitors. This is the main reason why many companies go for the complete overhaul of their website design. They are ready to invest in the most expensive designer in the market to get most superior results. They spend many hours into reviewing the homepage over and again as it is like the cover of the book which matters the most. An online visitor spends most of his/her time on the homepage of various website so the one that has the best web design clicks for the user and this is what brings in one new customers for the business that gave importance to its home page designing. So keep in mind that the home page is the most crucial. It implies for any real world entity. If the design is not good then it appeal to the user and he would never put in his money to buy that product. So make your home page design the most appealing and see your customer base grow at a very healthy rate.
Apart from this the ease of navigation incorporated in the website design is what makes a website highly user friendly and thus bringing in more traffic day by day. If a user spends more than a minute too look for a particular section on your website then he would surely move on to the next website as the web design would fail to impress him in the first place by not showing him what he is looking for. So make sure that your menus follow the standards and principles of good web designing. A designer who is good at his works knows how to bring out the best website in terms of navigations. He places all the right menus and the right links at the right places for the user to access. Also the bread crumb approach is something that proves to be highly beneficial in this aspect.
Most of the times you might have all the right ingredients in your website but you just need a good designer to set everything right. The key in having a good website design to understand your audience well and then have a web design that is both user friendly as well as appealing to your prospective customers. Bring in more clarity for your overall business through a great website and see your customer's trust rise in you to bring in more profits and reputation through the online world.
A Great Freelance Design can win Multiple Orders.
Freelance web design is not only about designing the website; it is also about making the products of the company getting sold more than the others. Now, how is it possible for a freelance web designer to go about his job in his capacity as a part time or even a full time expert? Obviously, he or she has the expertise to do freelance designing on the web. And not all companies readily offer the job of web designing to freelance designers.
They look for freelancers with proven expertise in their field and also the charges that have to be competitive. Instead of going to a web designing company, it is more cost effective to hire freelance designers for the job as they are readily available like freelance editors for various online publications. It is extremely important that the designer has full control over the potential disadvantage of working from home. In the controlled environment of the office it is often easier to concentrate on producing quality work.
Freelance web design becomes imperative for companies to not only draw more traffic to their sites, but also to sell their products. Much of the product sales online happen due to the grand freelance designing by freelancers who have made sales figures rise. If the website has been made attractive by a freelance web designer, he gets more jobs online through referrals and also when the company plans for another website or for developing the existing one.
But the client who hires a freelance designer or a freelance web designer knows what he wants and expects the same to be delivered. If the website does not come out according to his requirement, the client may not accept and would not repeat the order later on. Furthermore the reputation of the designer can be damaged to the extent that bad word of mouth reports affect the prospect of future work.
Clients can also save thousands of dollars if they work with a single freelance web designer for all their ongoing projects. If they had to hire a designer elsewhere from some web designing company, they would have had to pay a lot more to get their job done. Working with a freelance designer for many projects together also sort of gets him or her on board the company and a trust develops. The freelance web designer knows beforehand what the requirement would be and he or she would work to perfect it much more.
Clients always want the best from the freelance designer as they are paying and literally putting their money on the person to deliver. A lot of responsibility goes with accepting a freelance web designing job. If the freelance designer is not convinced or has issues about the job, he or she should get it cleared with the client before proceeding. Freelance designers should sense the client’s requirement and go about accordingly to set up a project which would be in total conformity.
Freelance designing involves a lot of time and patience, but also requires enough speed to get the work done on time to meet the deadline. It is extremely important to get the job done on time as the client expects this to be an advantage for choosing a freelancer for the project. For all aspects of doing freelance work at home don't forget to pick up my FREE REPORT from the Bio Box below.
They look for freelancers with proven expertise in their field and also the charges that have to be competitive. Instead of going to a web designing company, it is more cost effective to hire freelance designers for the job as they are readily available like freelance editors for various online publications. It is extremely important that the designer has full control over the potential disadvantage of working from home. In the controlled environment of the office it is often easier to concentrate on producing quality work.
Freelance web design becomes imperative for companies to not only draw more traffic to their sites, but also to sell their products. Much of the product sales online happen due to the grand freelance designing by freelancers who have made sales figures rise. If the website has been made attractive by a freelance web designer, he gets more jobs online through referrals and also when the company plans for another website or for developing the existing one.
But the client who hires a freelance designer or a freelance web designer knows what he wants and expects the same to be delivered. If the website does not come out according to his requirement, the client may not accept and would not repeat the order later on. Furthermore the reputation of the designer can be damaged to the extent that bad word of mouth reports affect the prospect of future work.
Clients can also save thousands of dollars if they work with a single freelance web designer for all their ongoing projects. If they had to hire a designer elsewhere from some web designing company, they would have had to pay a lot more to get their job done. Working with a freelance designer for many projects together also sort of gets him or her on board the company and a trust develops. The freelance web designer knows beforehand what the requirement would be and he or she would work to perfect it much more.
Clients always want the best from the freelance designer as they are paying and literally putting their money on the person to deliver. A lot of responsibility goes with accepting a freelance web designing job. If the freelance designer is not convinced or has issues about the job, he or she should get it cleared with the client before proceeding. Freelance designers should sense the client’s requirement and go about accordingly to set up a project which would be in total conformity.
Freelance designing involves a lot of time and patience, but also requires enough speed to get the work done on time to meet the deadline. It is extremely important to get the job done on time as the client expects this to be an advantage for choosing a freelancer for the project. For all aspects of doing freelance work at home don't forget to pick up my FREE REPORT from the Bio Box below.
Simple web designing ideas to make your website successful
During my online journeys I have noticed many websites that look 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. I have jotted down a few important tips from the point of view of web designers and propose to share then with you.
Here are some handy tips for web designers:-
Use CSS to format your text: Cascading style sheets make you play the designing game in a much easier way. Use one style sheet and control how text and layout look on your entire site. Follow the K.I.S.S. principle: Keep it simple, stupid!
Design Search engine friendly pages: It simply means taking care of the Meta tags and the content with which you want to promote products through your site. Make smart use of the keywords, placing them in ascending order of their priority in Meta tags as well as in content.
Avoid common spammer tactics like grouping keywords at the bottom of your page, or trying to "hide" keywords by making the text the same colour as your page's background.
Text size, Text contrast, Text Line Spacing: Text is everything for a website. After all it is only the text that makes people understand what you want them to understand. And to make them understand better and retain interest it’s important to use a font size big enough to read. Also, the more contrast, the better. Give the lines enough room to breathe by keeping a decent amount of line spacing.
Easy Navigation: It is the key to lead visitors to make buying decisions while going through your website! Ensure that visitors can navigate in a very flexible way. Always have a "home page" link on every page and have a "top of page" link at the bottom of every page that is longer than the visitor can see at normal browser settings. Don't send visitors down a blind alley with no obvious way out. Many people will simply exit your site if it is unclear where to go next.
Building and maintaining a website takes time and work, but if done properly your website can repay your efforts.
Here are some handy tips for web designers:-
Use CSS to format your text: Cascading style sheets make you play the designing game in a much easier way. Use one style sheet and control how text and layout look on your entire site. Follow the K.I.S.S. principle: Keep it simple, stupid!
Design Search engine friendly pages: It simply means taking care of the Meta tags and the content with which you want to promote products through your site. Make smart use of the keywords, placing them in ascending order of their priority in Meta tags as well as in content.
Avoid common spammer tactics like grouping keywords at the bottom of your page, or trying to "hide" keywords by making the text the same colour as your page's background.
Text size, Text contrast, Text Line Spacing: Text is everything for a website. After all it is only the text that makes people understand what you want them to understand. And to make them understand better and retain interest it’s important to use a font size big enough to read. Also, the more contrast, the better. Give the lines enough room to breathe by keeping a decent amount of line spacing.
Easy Navigation: It is the key to lead visitors to make buying decisions while going through your website! Ensure that visitors can navigate in a very flexible way. Always have a "home page" link on every page and have a "top of page" link at the bottom of every page that is longer than the visitor can see at normal browser settings. Don't send visitors down a blind alley with no obvious way out. Many people will simply exit your site if it is unclear where to go next.
Building and maintaining a website takes time and work, but if done properly your website can repay your efforts.
Flash Website Designs – The Good & The Bad
The evolution of website design thrives on new technologies and applications that are used here. One of the most popular trends that have come up is Flash. Flash intro layouts are used extensively and help to uplift the visual appearance of the website. With Flash, you can include live action presentations and sound effects in your website and make it more dynamic. In fact, you can also include animated menus and flash headers and impress the visitors of your website. Many business websites as well as personal websites use flash intro templates to get a feeling of professionalism. Internet users prefer interactive features on a website and nothing other than flash intro template can satiate this better.
Flash intro templates can be advantageous for both dynamic as well as static websites. In fact, it helps you establish a stronger and more powerful web presence. It not only enhances the website presentation but also grants it a professional and sophisticated look and feel. The best thing about Flash intros is that they are easy to work with and do not require any specialized knowledge for the management and customization process. In fact, you don't even have to use complex designing softwares. You can do an easy job with the help of Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash MX 6 and HTML editors.
Flash can make a boring website look interesting and give it an instant face lift.
So much for the advantages of Flash. But here are some major negative aspects of Flash.
One of the major disadvantage of Flash is that it makes web pages heavy and as a result, they take more time to load.. flash intros typically have complex graphics that need larger file sizes of the.swf file. This increases the loading time of the website. And considering the patience levels of internet users, they would not stay very long if the homepage of the website takes too much time to load fully. Your animated sales pitch would be useful only of people read it. What is the point of spending time and effort in loading something that would eventually not even be read by people?
Flash intros are actually flash animations that are designed by using vector animation software. This makes people think that it is a costly affair and needs a lot of time and effort for their creation. However, on the contrary, flash intros are pretty easy to create with website softwares.
Another major disadvantage has been the problem of Flash with search engines. During the initial stages, search engines completely failed to crawl web pages designed with Flash. However, with time, this fallacy was come over. But still, websites built completely on Flash including the navigation links etc. fail to rank well with Google. This is a major cause why the use of Flash is limited and used only strategically.
Flash can greatly enhance the style, look and feel of the website. However, it should be used strategically and carefully. Only when you weigh the good and bad parts of the concept can you employ it profitably on your website.
Flash intro templates can be advantageous for both dynamic as well as static websites. In fact, it helps you establish a stronger and more powerful web presence. It not only enhances the website presentation but also grants it a professional and sophisticated look and feel. The best thing about Flash intros is that they are easy to work with and do not require any specialized knowledge for the management and customization process. In fact, you don't even have to use complex designing softwares. You can do an easy job with the help of Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash MX 6 and HTML editors.
Flash can make a boring website look interesting and give it an instant face lift.
So much for the advantages of Flash. But here are some major negative aspects of Flash.
One of the major disadvantage of Flash is that it makes web pages heavy and as a result, they take more time to load.. flash intros typically have complex graphics that need larger file sizes of the.swf file. This increases the loading time of the website. And considering the patience levels of internet users, they would not stay very long if the homepage of the website takes too much time to load fully. Your animated sales pitch would be useful only of people read it. What is the point of spending time and effort in loading something that would eventually not even be read by people?
Flash intros are actually flash animations that are designed by using vector animation software. This makes people think that it is a costly affair and needs a lot of time and effort for their creation. However, on the contrary, flash intros are pretty easy to create with website softwares.
Another major disadvantage has been the problem of Flash with search engines. During the initial stages, search engines completely failed to crawl web pages designed with Flash. However, with time, this fallacy was come over. But still, websites built completely on Flash including the navigation links etc. fail to rank well with Google. This is a major cause why the use of Flash is limited and used only strategically.
Flash can greatly enhance the style, look and feel of the website. However, it should be used strategically and carefully. Only when you weigh the good and bad parts of the concept can you employ it profitably on your website.
Importance of simplicity in Web Designing
A web design represents the face of a company online on the net. It gives a company a unique individuality among the millions of websites on the world wide web.
Simplicity in web designing means how easily and effectively your website can communicate the company messages. It is the look or design of the webpage that will communicate to the web surfer about the personality of the organisation. It is the duty of the web designer to give you a web layout that speaks for your company. Based on company goals and requirements, the website designer will come up with an appropriate layout.
Infact it is not that easy to do a simple layout. The web designer has various knowledge about graphic software and makes use of them to the best of his ability. By overdoing things with the graphic software, the designer might make lots of mistakes. For example by putting lots of effects in an image, the beauty of the image disappears.
The same applies with the content of the website. Content that are too poetic may divert the reader's attention and he fails to the right message for which he has come to the website.
Below we have highlighted the reasons why a simple layout is always preferable when designing a website.
• It is easy to understand and interpret a simple layout.
• The website will have a professional look and feel and thus enhances the personality of the company's online presence.
• Simple contents like text and lighter photos are not heavy in size and are downloaded rapidly.
• Search engines loves simple websites as there download time is less and has better keyword results.
• Human scan webpages rather than read every words in a website. Thus they can easily scan a simple and elegant website than heavy and colourful look.
• It takes less space on the server and bandwidth, thus lowering the cost of hosting a website.
• Simple web pages takes less space of the server and bandwidth.
• A simple layout is more flexible in nature. Any requirement for redesigning or modifying the website cab be easily done.
• It is easy to maintain a simple layout and can work well of different platforms or browsers.
• It saves the web surfers's time and he gets the information to the point.
It helps in building a trust between the company and the user as the user gets what information he is looking for.
Nowadays many websites are designed in Flash and other creative software. Simplicity in web designing is always appreciated. If you can keep your website simple and the user get the information he wants, you will see many viewers trusting your company's information and products.
Simplicity in web designing means how easily and effectively your website can communicate the company messages. It is the look or design of the webpage that will communicate to the web surfer about the personality of the organisation. It is the duty of the web designer to give you a web layout that speaks for your company. Based on company goals and requirements, the website designer will come up with an appropriate layout.
Infact it is not that easy to do a simple layout. The web designer has various knowledge about graphic software and makes use of them to the best of his ability. By overdoing things with the graphic software, the designer might make lots of mistakes. For example by putting lots of effects in an image, the beauty of the image disappears.
The same applies with the content of the website. Content that are too poetic may divert the reader's attention and he fails to the right message for which he has come to the website.
Below we have highlighted the reasons why a simple layout is always preferable when designing a website.
• It is easy to understand and interpret a simple layout.
• The website will have a professional look and feel and thus enhances the personality of the company's online presence.
• Simple contents like text and lighter photos are not heavy in size and are downloaded rapidly.
• Search engines loves simple websites as there download time is less and has better keyword results.
• Human scan webpages rather than read every words in a website. Thus they can easily scan a simple and elegant website than heavy and colourful look.
• It takes less space on the server and bandwidth, thus lowering the cost of hosting a website.
• Simple web pages takes less space of the server and bandwidth.
• A simple layout is more flexible in nature. Any requirement for redesigning or modifying the website cab be easily done.
• It is easy to maintain a simple layout and can work well of different platforms or browsers.
• It saves the web surfers's time and he gets the information to the point.
It helps in building a trust between the company and the user as the user gets what information he is looking for.
Nowadays many websites are designed in Flash and other creative software. Simplicity in web designing is always appreciated. If you can keep your website simple and the user get the information he wants, you will see many viewers trusting your company's information and products.
Build Good Rapport with Web Designer for Effective Website Design
Every website owner wants the best design for their site that can fulfill their business dreams and goals. For that you need to communicate your needs to the web designer. However it is one of the most difficult part as the language of these designers in terms of website details is quite different from us.
The first step involves decision regarding hiring of a website designer to build the site. You carry out some basic research to find out the designer. You may be successful in finding a web designer who have the required skills and expertise expected and can design website with extraordinary yet simple and elegant design.
After the designer has been finalized now comes the main process of communicating with them. Explaining them about what type of layout design you have in your imagination and what you want from them can be a tiring process. Problem arises in crafting the thoughts or picture of your mind into words. In most of the cases such things create hurdle in getting the exact outcome been intended by you. Despite of the web designer being highly skilled if you fail to explain them in professional language about designing requirements than their talent may not be used to the fullest for your advantage.
In such circumstances two outcomes may come- you know what type of content and website design layout you want but due to proper explanation it would not get implemented. Secondly, you know what content is to be put on the site but don't know how to present it.
So its important to explain the web designers your thoughts. Sometimes when clients are unable to tell what exactly is there in their minds, they leave the job of web designing to content development to the web designer giving them complete freedom for action. This option proves to be effective in most of the situations. Instead of explaining about the color scheme or layout, you let them know about your website nature, details about products that you sell.
If you come across some reference sites that look the way in the manner you want your website to look than, give the url address to the web designer. They would get an idea about your requirements and can work towards it. More the number of such sites that express your needs better it would be for the designers to come up with designs matching your imagination. The logic behind is not a single website can contain all the exact features that you want otherwise there was no need to create a different one.
The first step involves decision regarding hiring of a website designer to build the site. You carry out some basic research to find out the designer. You may be successful in finding a web designer who have the required skills and expertise expected and can design website with extraordinary yet simple and elegant design.
After the designer has been finalized now comes the main process of communicating with them. Explaining them about what type of layout design you have in your imagination and what you want from them can be a tiring process. Problem arises in crafting the thoughts or picture of your mind into words. In most of the cases such things create hurdle in getting the exact outcome been intended by you. Despite of the web designer being highly skilled if you fail to explain them in professional language about designing requirements than their talent may not be used to the fullest for your advantage.
In such circumstances two outcomes may come- you know what type of content and website design layout you want but due to proper explanation it would not get implemented. Secondly, you know what content is to be put on the site but don't know how to present it.
So its important to explain the web designers your thoughts. Sometimes when clients are unable to tell what exactly is there in their minds, they leave the job of web designing to content development to the web designer giving them complete freedom for action. This option proves to be effective in most of the situations. Instead of explaining about the color scheme or layout, you let them know about your website nature, details about products that you sell.
If you come across some reference sites that look the way in the manner you want your website to look than, give the url address to the web designer. They would get an idea about your requirements and can work towards it. More the number of such sites that express your needs better it would be for the designers to come up with designs matching your imagination. The logic behind is not a single website can contain all the exact features that you want otherwise there was no need to create a different one.
Web Design London - Creative Web Design For Your Website
If web design london,web designing is the art of combining an eye for color with imagination in the juxtaposition of font, lines, outlines and drawings, it would seem to have come of age in Hyderabad.
Come to think of it, web designing is only a sophisticated version of what a journalist working at the desk in a newspaper office does; the only difference is that while the latter is engaged in a race against time to meet the deadline for the day’s newspaper, web design london ,web designers have all the time in the world for aiming at perfection.
For instance, web design london ,web designers can try different colors before deciding which of them is garish and which is easy on the eye.
By the same token, the web design london ,web designer can take his/her own time to decide which font would make the text easy to read and which would impose a strain on the eye.
Common sense dictates that when the text is large, the font must necessarily be small so that the entire text can be accommodated in the space available, but never so small as to be unreadable.
It is, however, true that longer texts defeat their own purpose: they are mostly left unread! That is why it is said that any piece of writing that exceeds 500 words is certainly not for the web.
Another essential element of web designing is aesthetics.
While a journalist working at the desk in a newspaper office has to accommodate the maximum reading material in the space available (that underscores the importance of editing and rewriting which is a sophisticated form of précis-writing), the web design London, web designer understands that the pages of a website are not meant to resemble a garbage can!
Therefore, while providing space for the maximum reading matter, though only in its essentials, the web design London,web designer makes presentation of the matter attractive through a dash of color and use of the right font for the write-up of the right length.
All this is interesting, but what does, say, a company do after it has had a website for a considerable period of time? Can it be sure that it is still being visited? What if it has begun to pall on those who may be visiting it regularly?
It is because no company can escape the feeling that its original website, attractive though in itself, may no longer be attracting attention that most websites are redesigned. They look different even though they do not necessarily change their character or content. A change in the font here, a different color there, makes all the difference, so much so that the refurbished website looks new and different and holds the attention of those visiting it before it begins to flag.
Come to think of it, web designing is only a sophisticated version of what a journalist working at the desk in a newspaper office does; the only difference is that while the latter is engaged in a race against time to meet the deadline for the day’s newspaper, web design london ,web designers have all the time in the world for aiming at perfection.
For instance, web design london ,web designers can try different colors before deciding which of them is garish and which is easy on the eye.
By the same token, the web design london ,web designer can take his/her own time to decide which font would make the text easy to read and which would impose a strain on the eye.
Common sense dictates that when the text is large, the font must necessarily be small so that the entire text can be accommodated in the space available, but never so small as to be unreadable.
It is, however, true that longer texts defeat their own purpose: they are mostly left unread! That is why it is said that any piece of writing that exceeds 500 words is certainly not for the web.
Another essential element of web designing is aesthetics.
While a journalist working at the desk in a newspaper office has to accommodate the maximum reading material in the space available (that underscores the importance of editing and rewriting which is a sophisticated form of précis-writing), the web design London, web designer understands that the pages of a website are not meant to resemble a garbage can!
Therefore, while providing space for the maximum reading matter, though only in its essentials, the web design London,web designer makes presentation of the matter attractive through a dash of color and use of the right font for the write-up of the right length.
All this is interesting, but what does, say, a company do after it has had a website for a considerable period of time? Can it be sure that it is still being visited? What if it has begun to pall on those who may be visiting it regularly?
It is because no company can escape the feeling that its original website, attractive though in itself, may no longer be attracting attention that most websites are redesigned. They look different even though they do not necessarily change their character or content. A change in the font here, a different color there, makes all the difference, so much so that the refurbished website looks new and different and holds the attention of those visiting it before it begins to flag.
Discover Why Sitemaps Are an Integral Part of Good Web Design
The term sitemap refers to a page on a website that collates links to every page on the site in order to make pages as easy to find, for both users and search engine crawlers, as possible. Typically these links will be grouped together and organized in a manner that represents the structure of the website and they can provide a variety of benefits to the owner of the site. This article aims to look at why it is important to utilise sitemaps when creating a website for both visitor usability and search engine optimization reasons.
Two different forms of sitemap are common (HTML and XML), and both are important to include for different reasons. HTML sitemaps can be viewed as being for the benefit of human visitors; they offer the user a single webpage from which they are able to navigate to any other place on the website with a single click. A well designed sitemap that organises all of the links into easy to navigate sections will greatly improve the user’s experience thus increasing the likelihood of the visitor to return to the website in the future.
XML sitemaps on the other hand are for the benefit of search engines. Search engine bots crawl websites by following links from one page to another and for large and sprawling websites it can be all too easy for a link to be missed and a page left orphaned. Uploading a sitemap provides an easy way to ensure that the search engines are aware of every single page on a particular site.
XML sitemaps are of particular importance to websites that have a large quantity of dynamic (for example flash) content. Although most of the search engines are greatly improving with regards to crawling dynamic sites providing them with a sitemap is a way to be certain that every page is found rather than just hoping that the bots will be successful on their own.
Sitemaps also provide a quick way to let the search engines know when the content on a site has been updated. Although this in itself will not ensure that the entire website is crawled straight it is typical for search engines to send crawlers out more regularly to sites that they know are updating content regularly and sitemaps provide them with this information.
In conclusion, sitemaps can be a great tool in both ensuring visitors find the site simple and intuitive as well as a method of making sure that search engine bots crawl every page of a site. While a good sitemap alone will not make up for a poorly designed and difficult to navigate website the benefits outlined above can go a long way in helping new sites (that have fewer links pointing to them) and dynamic sites (that some search engine crawlers can struggle with) advance.
Two different forms of sitemap are common (HTML and XML), and both are important to include for different reasons. HTML sitemaps can be viewed as being for the benefit of human visitors; they offer the user a single webpage from which they are able to navigate to any other place on the website with a single click. A well designed sitemap that organises all of the links into easy to navigate sections will greatly improve the user’s experience thus increasing the likelihood of the visitor to return to the website in the future.
XML sitemaps on the other hand are for the benefit of search engines. Search engine bots crawl websites by following links from one page to another and for large and sprawling websites it can be all too easy for a link to be missed and a page left orphaned. Uploading a sitemap provides an easy way to ensure that the search engines are aware of every single page on a particular site.
XML sitemaps are of particular importance to websites that have a large quantity of dynamic (for example flash) content. Although most of the search engines are greatly improving with regards to crawling dynamic sites providing them with a sitemap is a way to be certain that every page is found rather than just hoping that the bots will be successful on their own.
Sitemaps also provide a quick way to let the search engines know when the content on a site has been updated. Although this in itself will not ensure that the entire website is crawled straight it is typical for search engines to send crawlers out more regularly to sites that they know are updating content regularly and sitemaps provide them with this information.
In conclusion, sitemaps can be a great tool in both ensuring visitors find the site simple and intuitive as well as a method of making sure that search engine bots crawl every page of a site. While a good sitemap alone will not make up for a poorly designed and difficult to navigate website the benefits outlined above can go a long way in helping new sites (that have fewer links pointing to them) and dynamic sites (that some search engine crawlers can struggle with) advance.
Logo Design Tips To Build A Competitive New York Web Design Company
A research study has proven that most people want to associate themselves with brands that they think represent their own taste. This is the effect of successful logo. In business, creating a professional image is one the most crucial pace to obtain the higher ground. Companies like Coca-Cola?, IBM?, Microsoft? and other successful corporations spent millions of dollars each year improving and refining their brand. You can do the same with the help of a professional New York web design company without the same expense.
Whether it is for an auto repair shop, wardrobe company, coffee shop like Starbucks or a nanotechnology firm like Silicon Valley, a business logo design has to consist of several basic qualities to be successful:
1. Easy to Remember - The logic in this part is simple, though common mistakes in Basic Logo Design 101 can result in an image that no one will ever remember. You want your logo to be remembered every time people see it, and make them think of both your logo and your business.
2. A Shape or Object - An effective logo is never a typeface. It is always a shape or object. Though the font used along with the logo design is not a logo, it is still also a crucial integral part.
3. Distinctive Color and Contrast - The color selection is important. Choice of color is dependent on your target customers, e.g. Toy Store = Bright and Cheerful, Industrial Supply = Bold and Serious, etc. and when choosing colors keep it to no more than two or three colors that have enough contrast between them that they are appreciable even when reproduced poorly.
4. Visual Symmetry - Depending on the type of business you are in, most logos have good weight distribution, balance and visual symmetry.
5. Resize and Reuse - A wonderful logo design is only good if you can use it. So, keep it simple and avoid complex shapes or intricate lines.
6. Social Feedback - Post your new logo design online. e.g. Flicker. Start a Flicker account, upload your designs, and then invite friends to comment on it.
Above all: keep your logo design simple. Proper knowledge of incorporating your logo design into the website is possible with New York web design company and professionals. If you finally decide on a logo design for your business, test out by creating replicas of it in use. For example, place a copy of your logo in a newspaper ad design and in any other media examples to see what it will look like in various sizes and colors.
Whether it is for an auto repair shop, wardrobe company, coffee shop like Starbucks or a nanotechnology firm like Silicon Valley, a business logo design has to consist of several basic qualities to be successful:
1. Easy to Remember - The logic in this part is simple, though common mistakes in Basic Logo Design 101 can result in an image that no one will ever remember. You want your logo to be remembered every time people see it, and make them think of both your logo and your business.
2. A Shape or Object - An effective logo is never a typeface. It is always a shape or object. Though the font used along with the logo design is not a logo, it is still also a crucial integral part.
3. Distinctive Color and Contrast - The color selection is important. Choice of color is dependent on your target customers, e.g. Toy Store = Bright and Cheerful, Industrial Supply = Bold and Serious, etc. and when choosing colors keep it to no more than two or three colors that have enough contrast between them that they are appreciable even when reproduced poorly.
4. Visual Symmetry - Depending on the type of business you are in, most logos have good weight distribution, balance and visual symmetry.
5. Resize and Reuse - A wonderful logo design is only good if you can use it. So, keep it simple and avoid complex shapes or intricate lines.
6. Social Feedback - Post your new logo design online. e.g. Flicker. Start a Flicker account, upload your designs, and then invite friends to comment on it.
Above all: keep your logo design simple. Proper knowledge of incorporating your logo design into the website is possible with New York web design company and professionals. If you finally decide on a logo design for your business, test out by creating replicas of it in use. For example, place a copy of your logo in a newspaper ad design and in any other media examples to see what it will look like in various sizes and colors.
Web design company, to make your website a symbol of beauty and technicality
Online business is gaining popularity, because of the quick services and innovative opportunities that it provides. As a result, entrepreneurs who are interested in expanding their business are establishing it on the internet. Looking at the present day scenario it can be said that the online business is the most effective medium by which any company can promote its business. It is also one such medium which provides the entrepreneur with the opportunity to interact with its clients and above all it provides services instantly with ease.
Now that you are in a position to start you online business easily, then the first and foremost thing that you require is a proficiently designed and beautiful looking website. Websites that can catch the attention of the visitors on the internet. These websites can act as the perfect tool, by which you can promote your online ventures and become a popular figure in the online business world. Primarily a mirror to reflect your image, it even helps you in getting a speedy sales and a fast business growth.
All these factors have led to the vast increase in the demand of a variety of websites. It is because of this that there has been a tremendous growth in the website design company in India. These web designing companies have been dominating the World Wide Web. The other important reason behind the emergence of such organizations is the technical advancement and the upcoming of various new business platforms.
But as this web designing business field is overflowing with the online competitors and every organization is trying to prove its worth by a perfect web site. So in this case, just possessing a website on the internet is not enough for any body. Therefore these web designing companies have been trying to use the latest technology and designing tools to design website which can retain the interest of the viewers.
These web design companies also pay attention on several other aspects such as graphic designing, coral draw, content management, logo and brochure designing and many other things. All these aspects are kept into consideration during the overall development of any website.
So, some of the important things that you should keep in mind while choosing a web design company, are that you should choose a company which is well versed with the designing of a perfect website. This thing includes layout and the design, navigational keys, font, color, text, theme, images and flash elements as the effectiveness of the website depends largely on it. A good web design company is the one who is aware of all these factors and can balance them properly to develop a beautiful website according to the business requirement of its clients.
For any kind of web development there are different types of methodologies that are incorporated, so make sure that the web design company you choose should be well aware of all these functionalities.
Now that you are in a position to start you online business easily, then the first and foremost thing that you require is a proficiently designed and beautiful looking website. Websites that can catch the attention of the visitors on the internet. These websites can act as the perfect tool, by which you can promote your online ventures and become a popular figure in the online business world. Primarily a mirror to reflect your image, it even helps you in getting a speedy sales and a fast business growth.
All these factors have led to the vast increase in the demand of a variety of websites. It is because of this that there has been a tremendous growth in the website design company in India. These web designing companies have been dominating the World Wide Web. The other important reason behind the emergence of such organizations is the technical advancement and the upcoming of various new business platforms.
But as this web designing business field is overflowing with the online competitors and every organization is trying to prove its worth by a perfect web site. So in this case, just possessing a website on the internet is not enough for any body. Therefore these web designing companies have been trying to use the latest technology and designing tools to design website which can retain the interest of the viewers.
These web design companies also pay attention on several other aspects such as graphic designing, coral draw, content management, logo and brochure designing and many other things. All these aspects are kept into consideration during the overall development of any website.
So, some of the important things that you should keep in mind while choosing a web design company, are that you should choose a company which is well versed with the designing of a perfect website. This thing includes layout and the design, navigational keys, font, color, text, theme, images and flash elements as the effectiveness of the website depends largely on it. A good web design company is the one who is aware of all these factors and can balance them properly to develop a beautiful website according to the business requirement of its clients.
For any kind of web development there are different types of methodologies that are incorporated, so make sure that the web design company you choose should be well aware of all these functionalities.
Can You Afford These 5 Web Site Design Mistakes?
After several experiments and debates on designing websites, why do the web designers still fail to come up with something good? What a waste of having so much experience if you are constantly making designs with blinking text and flashy animations, probably impressive for public coming straight from the 90’s, but surely not applicable today—it’s a new world, and a new era people, we already got too much glitz and glitter around, now can we get something meaningful as well??
Many websites make us want to nearly bang our heads somewhere. Landing on a page and getting nothing out of it is totally frustrating. Why can’t the designs be simple, pleasant and usable altogether? Is this too much to ask for? No it is certainly not, to get your website designing right on target, make sure your website is free from these 5 simple design errors:
1. Give Your Fish Water—Not The Bone:
First impressions are very important—you have already hooked your customers, successfully brought them to your website, your countdown starts now! You have only a few seconds to make a good first impression and make your visitors come back to you. The best thing you can do in this regard is to give them all that they really want. Nothing more, nothing less! Relevancy should be exact.
2. Oops! Of Fonts, Colors, Content, and Navigation:
You would naturally think that the basic thing when creating a new website is to make it "easy" for the visitors to read. But it still stuns me how many websites are unreadable. Why on earth do people do this!
The seven major sins you commit while designing are:
1) Using tiny and non re-sizeable text when the page is enlarged 2) Using difficult font style, practically hurting one’s eyes 3) Using dark colored background with blocks of colored text 4) Grammatical and spelling mistakes in the website copy—this is the biggest turn-off you can ever give to your visitors! 5) Cramming huge amounts of information in a single page without leaving desirable white space 6) Using wild and crazy color schemes—go slow with loud colors, keep them to the minimum 7) Complex navigation and inactive links—totally annoying believe me 8) And lastly, horizontal scrolling—the biggest joke you can play on your visitors while designing, so please avoid it!
3. What’s The Point Of Using Flash Menus?
Are you obsessed with flashing menus, images, and text? I would say: DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! There is no excuse for having such time-consuming elements at a place where time is gravely important to visitors. No one really waits for even a few seconds to let those childish images flash on the screen so they could continue exploring the site afterwards. Just don’t use them if you want to keep your visitors from running away from your site.
4. Design and Layout—For Humans, Not Search Engines:
Remember one thing: your site is for people, not solely for search engines. It’s good to be SEO-friendly, but sacrificing visitors who could actually turn into your customers just for the sake of getting top rankings is absolutely insane. Get the design and layout right and you will be on the way to having a successful website, get it wrong and your site will flop.
5. Browser Compatibility:
Last but not the least is the fact overlooked by many designers that not all browsers are the same with the same codes of interpretation. Therefore, whether you like it or not, make certain your website is cross-browser compatible or else there’s a great chance you may lose your customers interest over the long term.
Many websites make us want to nearly bang our heads somewhere. Landing on a page and getting nothing out of it is totally frustrating. Why can’t the designs be simple, pleasant and usable altogether? Is this too much to ask for? No it is certainly not, to get your website designing right on target, make sure your website is free from these 5 simple design errors:
1. Give Your Fish Water—Not The Bone:
First impressions are very important—you have already hooked your customers, successfully brought them to your website, your countdown starts now! You have only a few seconds to make a good first impression and make your visitors come back to you. The best thing you can do in this regard is to give them all that they really want. Nothing more, nothing less! Relevancy should be exact.
2. Oops! Of Fonts, Colors, Content, and Navigation:
You would naturally think that the basic thing when creating a new website is to make it "easy" for the visitors to read. But it still stuns me how many websites are unreadable. Why on earth do people do this!
The seven major sins you commit while designing are:
1) Using tiny and non re-sizeable text when the page is enlarged 2) Using difficult font style, practically hurting one’s eyes 3) Using dark colored background with blocks of colored text 4) Grammatical and spelling mistakes in the website copy—this is the biggest turn-off you can ever give to your visitors! 5) Cramming huge amounts of information in a single page without leaving desirable white space 6) Using wild and crazy color schemes—go slow with loud colors, keep them to the minimum 7) Complex navigation and inactive links—totally annoying believe me 8) And lastly, horizontal scrolling—the biggest joke you can play on your visitors while designing, so please avoid it!
3. What’s The Point Of Using Flash Menus?
Are you obsessed with flashing menus, images, and text? I would say: DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! There is no excuse for having such time-consuming elements at a place where time is gravely important to visitors. No one really waits for even a few seconds to let those childish images flash on the screen so they could continue exploring the site afterwards. Just don’t use them if you want to keep your visitors from running away from your site.
4. Design and Layout—For Humans, Not Search Engines:
Remember one thing: your site is for people, not solely for search engines. It’s good to be SEO-friendly, but sacrificing visitors who could actually turn into your customers just for the sake of getting top rankings is absolutely insane. Get the design and layout right and you will be on the way to having a successful website, get it wrong and your site will flop.
5. Browser Compatibility:
Last but not the least is the fact overlooked by many designers that not all browsers are the same with the same codes of interpretation. Therefore, whether you like it or not, make certain your website is cross-browser compatible or else there’s a great chance you may lose your customers interest over the long term.
Starting Your Own Sacramento Web Design Firm
In this age of modern communication and business methods, creating your own web design firm is a business that has a lot of prospects to grow. Indeed, small- to big-time businesses are springing left to right and they all want to build a website that can compete. There are several Sacramento web design companies in existence but you can still create one that can compete and long before, online newbies will turn to you for their web design needs.
You will begin by funding your business and there are loan options for that. Once you have the funds you need, think about other variables to your business such as location of your office, internet route, and other business prerequisites. You need to clearly outline all of these as they can impact your budget projection.
Then, you can look at hiring the staff that will make up your Sacramento web design company. Make sure that you properly screen your staff since they will serve as your business' gem. Therefore, you have to establish a standard for your business right off the bat. Then, you're off to the web development proper...
When developing a website for your client, it requires complex work. Here are some of the considerations you need to make:
* Identify how much hosting space is required for the client's website. If you want to store a massive amount of data and have several pages, then you will need a bigger space for that.
* Then, figure out the domain name for the website. There are also several domain name extension for you to use. As for the domain name itself, think of something that web visitors will be able to quickly remember so they can visit the site more often.
* Work together with the client in designing the concept for the website. Although visual and graphic elements are important, it is important that they are able to communicate their business through the web design.
* Tap one of your staff to work on the search engine optimization for the website. Nowadays, in order for a website to stay competitive, proper SEO strategies incorporated within the website design is vital to success.
* You can opt to include a content management system in order for visitors within the website to stay updated about the latest information within the site. However, you need to discuss it with your client to ensure that they have the budget for it.
Website development is never easy but with a proper understanding of the nature of this business, you can help establish your own Sacramento web design firm and excel in the market.
You will begin by funding your business and there are loan options for that. Once you have the funds you need, think about other variables to your business such as location of your office, internet route, and other business prerequisites. You need to clearly outline all of these as they can impact your budget projection.
Then, you can look at hiring the staff that will make up your Sacramento web design company. Make sure that you properly screen your staff since they will serve as your business' gem. Therefore, you have to establish a standard for your business right off the bat. Then, you're off to the web development proper...
When developing a website for your client, it requires complex work. Here are some of the considerations you need to make:
* Identify how much hosting space is required for the client's website. If you want to store a massive amount of data and have several pages, then you will need a bigger space for that.
* Then, figure out the domain name for the website. There are also several domain name extension for you to use. As for the domain name itself, think of something that web visitors will be able to quickly remember so they can visit the site more often.
* Work together with the client in designing the concept for the website. Although visual and graphic elements are important, it is important that they are able to communicate their business through the web design.
* Tap one of your staff to work on the search engine optimization for the website. Nowadays, in order for a website to stay competitive, proper SEO strategies incorporated within the website design is vital to success.
* You can opt to include a content management system in order for visitors within the website to stay updated about the latest information within the site. However, you need to discuss it with your client to ensure that they have the budget for it.
Website development is never easy but with a proper understanding of the nature of this business, you can help establish your own Sacramento web design firm and excel in the market.
Website Optimization
Website Optimization
A potential customer goes to a search engine and types in a keyword, he may not even know he is using a search engine, but he is. Depending upon the browser, it may be AOL, MSN or Google, the search engine returns a Search Results List. If you are at the top of the search results list (on the first 2 pages), your website will receive a significant amount of traffic, and potentially many sales. A well-optimized website will be found at the top of the top of the search results list, no matter which search engine.
Self Service / Low – Budget
If you have a small budget to commit to your Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, and you are willing to commit some of your time to performing actions to improving your rankings, this option may be for you. We have an option that will automatically assess your website and create a detailed itemized list of tasks you can perform that will improve the metrics search engines use to determine your website's rankings. At only $99/mo this is a truly unique opportunity for a low budget SEO option.
High Website Ranking means High Website Traffic
What good is a great website if it can't be found? High website ranking or search engine placement is a product of good keyword content, proper meta tags and linking strategies. Sounds simple but few websites are built with these website optimization services and principles in mind.Your website rankings could be directly related to the speed or viability of your business. Website marketing has become a major item of importance to many businesses.
(Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a specialized process that involves analyzing your website's underlying code, architecture, visible content, and link popularity and making enhancements so that the site is returned more prominently in the search results of relevancy-based, algorithm-driven search engines (such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN). The best way to develop a sound search engine optimization strategy is to work with an experience search engine optimization (SEO) firm.SEO) Companies, Firms and Services.
SEO That's Built to Last Good SEO work only gets better over time. It’s only search engine tricks that need to keep changing when the ranking algorithms change. Educating you about SEO best practices and arming you with a roadmap for success allows you to keep your website optimized long after we've done our job, ultimately saving your company money.
We are dedicated to helping your business successfully and effectively integrate search marketing into your overall marketing strategy.Search Engine Submission of your Web site by one of our experienced project managers to ensure your site receives the highest ranking possible. Your site is then registered with thousands of search engines and directories worldwide.
Search Engine Optimization Services
Is your website appearing at the top? There are potential customers who are already searching for YOUR specific products and services. Can there be a higher qualified lead? Over 90% of our clients choose to renew our services.
We do one thing, and we do it very well. We are specialists in the field of Organic Search. We live, eat and breathe organic search. We perform in-house research and development to determine what works and what doesn't. We don't utilize myths and theories like many in this industry. We study, test, innovate, and implement. This is why we succeed.
A potential customer goes to a search engine and types in a keyword, he may not even know he is using a search engine, but he is. Depending upon the browser, it may be AOL, MSN or Google, the search engine returns a Search Results List. If you are at the top of the search results list (on the first 2 pages), your website will receive a significant amount of traffic, and potentially many sales. A well-optimized website will be found at the top of the top of the search results list, no matter which search engine.
Self Service / Low – Budget
If you have a small budget to commit to your Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, and you are willing to commit some of your time to performing actions to improving your rankings, this option may be for you. We have an option that will automatically assess your website and create a detailed itemized list of tasks you can perform that will improve the metrics search engines use to determine your website's rankings. At only $99/mo this is a truly unique opportunity for a low budget SEO option.
High Website Ranking means High Website Traffic
What good is a great website if it can't be found? High website ranking or search engine placement is a product of good keyword content, proper meta tags and linking strategies. Sounds simple but few websites are built with these website optimization services and principles in mind.Your website rankings could be directly related to the speed or viability of your business. Website marketing has become a major item of importance to many businesses.
(Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a specialized process that involves analyzing your website's underlying code, architecture, visible content, and link popularity and making enhancements so that the site is returned more prominently in the search results of relevancy-based, algorithm-driven search engines (such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN). The best way to develop a sound search engine optimization strategy is to work with an experience search engine optimization (SEO) firm.SEO) Companies, Firms and Services.
SEO That's Built to Last Good SEO work only gets better over time. It’s only search engine tricks that need to keep changing when the ranking algorithms change. Educating you about SEO best practices and arming you with a roadmap for success allows you to keep your website optimized long after we've done our job, ultimately saving your company money.
We are dedicated to helping your business successfully and effectively integrate search marketing into your overall marketing strategy.Search Engine Submission of your Web site by one of our experienced project managers to ensure your site receives the highest ranking possible. Your site is then registered with thousands of search engines and directories worldwide.
Search Engine Optimization Services
Is your website appearing at the top? There are potential customers who are already searching for YOUR specific products and services. Can there be a higher qualified lead? Over 90% of our clients choose to renew our services.
We do one thing, and we do it very well. We are specialists in the field of Organic Search. We live, eat and breathe organic search. We perform in-house research and development to determine what works and what doesn't. We don't utilize myths and theories like many in this industry. We study, test, innovate, and implement. This is why we succeed.
Effective Website Design Solutions
With technological advancement, digitalization and integration of various platforms number of websites is increasing day by day. Just having a website would not do, how many aficionados are there of your website??? How many clicks do you get on your website per day??? Does your website rank well and generate leads??? Effective website design is most important to attract your visitors so that they stick to your website and also find solutions on your website. I believe for effective website design basic knowledge of web design and development is essential.
In this tech savvy world, effective web design requires expertise and pragmatism in web design, graphics, search engine optimization and content as well. Mere web design knowledge would not work if the website is not search engine friendly.
You are thinking of creating world class website; do not worry! Just keep the following points into your mind for designing professional website.
Layout and design of a website is accountable for its effectiveness. Moreover, these are the key points on which a website’s popularity depends. Effective web design includes text type, text size, font size and font color, navigation system, color scheme. Web page with lots of graphics, images, flash banners may take time to load; visitors may get agitated and leave your website. Web design and development companies are advised to spend considerable time in finalizing final website design with clean layout and all web pages elements well organized. A professional web design and development company should consider these points. A professional web design and development company follows different development methodologies like agile development, extreme programming, rational unified process and model view controller before deriving any final conclusion.
Online business, media optimization, internet marketing and technology like web 2.0 have led to growth and increase in number of small, mid sized and large web design and development companies taking them to heights.
For internet presence of a website there are a number of prerequisites. Also, these professional web design companies are driven by rise of online business, social networks and communities, mashups and lot more.
For a company with a core competency other than IT, the best way to get it done is by outsourcing its web design and development requirements to any offshore web design company to ensure cost effectiveness. Moreover, there are a large number of startup offshore web design and development companies which offer professional web design and development services at cheap rates. The fact that they are cheap should not be mistaken for their web design quality. Rather these offshore web design companies by providing cheap web design and development services, want to build a strong list of client base and also attract a large number of customers and thus get established in the highly competitive market.
Web is the best place to find number of offshore web design and development companies. When a user enters a query string (keyword or keyphrase) for simple search then major search engines such as Google, yahoo, msn etc. will give a list of these web design and development companies. These search engines have a huge database of affordable, cheap, professional web design and development companies and a simple search will show you a list of such companies.
In this tech savvy world, effective web design requires expertise and pragmatism in web design, graphics, search engine optimization and content as well. Mere web design knowledge would not work if the website is not search engine friendly.
You are thinking of creating world class website; do not worry! Just keep the following points into your mind for designing professional website.
Layout and design of a website is accountable for its effectiveness. Moreover, these are the key points on which a website’s popularity depends. Effective web design includes text type, text size, font size and font color, navigation system, color scheme. Web page with lots of graphics, images, flash banners may take time to load; visitors may get agitated and leave your website. Web design and development companies are advised to spend considerable time in finalizing final website design with clean layout and all web pages elements well organized. A professional web design and development company should consider these points. A professional web design and development company follows different development methodologies like agile development, extreme programming, rational unified process and model view controller before deriving any final conclusion.
Online business, media optimization, internet marketing and technology like web 2.0 have led to growth and increase in number of small, mid sized and large web design and development companies taking them to heights.
For internet presence of a website there are a number of prerequisites. Also, these professional web design companies are driven by rise of online business, social networks and communities, mashups and lot more.
For a company with a core competency other than IT, the best way to get it done is by outsourcing its web design and development requirements to any offshore web design company to ensure cost effectiveness. Moreover, there are a large number of startup offshore web design and development companies which offer professional web design and development services at cheap rates. The fact that they are cheap should not be mistaken for their web design quality. Rather these offshore web design companies by providing cheap web design and development services, want to build a strong list of client base and also attract a large number of customers and thus get established in the highly competitive market.
Web is the best place to find number of offshore web design and development companies. When a user enters a query string (keyword or keyphrase) for simple search then major search engines such as Google, yahoo, msn etc. will give a list of these web design and development companies. These search engines have a huge database of affordable, cheap, professional web design and development companies and a simple search will show you a list of such companies.
Insert Flash Design into the Website for Successful Website Design
Flash website design is being used by many websites for improving their presentation and communication. Some people like it and some don't, the use of flash depends on this factor also. Many sources have bad mouthed flash that it is bad from SEO point of view and thus bringing down a websites ranking. But such situation arises when there is excessive usage of flash designs. If used in proper manner and required quantity, it could prove to be lucrative and effective both in delivering the message to the target audience. Flash website design has the caliber to instantly communicate the visitors information regarding products, service, aim of the site, etc.
Many misconceptions about flash is widespread in the market which is completely wrong. If its application is done in correct manner than it could increase the accessibility, SEO and usability. Flash designing is worth a try as it is one of the most powerful web communication tool that combines various multimedia tools like animation, video, sound and interaction. There are many things and thoughts that cannot be communicated through words or text, in such situation picture or dynamic online presentations can fulfill the purpose.
Instead of creating flash website or presentation, users can make flash an important part of HTML website. This is the manner in which the flash designers intend to use the flash technology. In order to get advantages of HTML content and Flash for website design, consider using the above mentioned hybrid solution.
Benefit of these hybrid sites is far more than only flash websites, as it leads to well optimized SEO friendly websites. Here even if the homepage contains lots of flash stuff, still it can be optimized using HTML content and the headers. This would lead to effective indexing of websites by major search engines. It results into getting visible search engine links to another content through the website.
It is a wrong conception that websites with flash content cannot get higher ranking, it can be optimized with primary keywords that are most likely to be used by users.
One of the important topic that comes forward in flash website design is the accessibility factor. It can be attained when users gets engaged in graphics, sound, animation, etc for better viewing. Use of Adobe in flash have brought about many improvements in terms of designing. Now the web developers and designers can get better access to content by Actionscript or accessibility panel.
Many misconceptions about flash is widespread in the market which is completely wrong. If its application is done in correct manner than it could increase the accessibility, SEO and usability. Flash designing is worth a try as it is one of the most powerful web communication tool that combines various multimedia tools like animation, video, sound and interaction. There are many things and thoughts that cannot be communicated through words or text, in such situation picture or dynamic online presentations can fulfill the purpose.
Instead of creating flash website or presentation, users can make flash an important part of HTML website. This is the manner in which the flash designers intend to use the flash technology. In order to get advantages of HTML content and Flash for website design, consider using the above mentioned hybrid solution.
Benefit of these hybrid sites is far more than only flash websites, as it leads to well optimized SEO friendly websites. Here even if the homepage contains lots of flash stuff, still it can be optimized using HTML content and the headers. This would lead to effective indexing of websites by major search engines. It results into getting visible search engine links to another content through the website.
It is a wrong conception that websites with flash content cannot get higher ranking, it can be optimized with primary keywords that are most likely to be used by users.
One of the important topic that comes forward in flash website design is the accessibility factor. It can be attained when users gets engaged in graphics, sound, animation, etc for better viewing. Use of Adobe in flash have brought about many improvements in terms of designing. Now the web developers and designers can get better access to content by Actionscript or accessibility panel.
Useful Hints for Web Designers
Web designing is as simple as counting 1,2,3 on your fingers. I am not saying this but there are many software in the market which claims and promise it to be true with the help of their software. We all understand it to be a marketing gimmick but still many among us falls into that booby trap. Could be possible that the site runs flawlessly on a particular browser but only on ‘a particular’ one despite of the fact there are many being used in this netizens world. The worst hit you when you acknowledge that people are using multiple browsers. So making a website compatible to majority used browsers becomes a necessity.
Now suppose you have a website which sells stuff online. Being a vendor, a website is your only medium to talk to your target audience and for that it must not be biased to some particular browser. This could cut half of your prospects, resulting a dip in the probability of making a sale.
Web Designing is, in my opinion, an optimum mix of creative skills & technical prowess – and one is no less important than the other. Below are the few points that I have read from some good valuable articles and blogs. Some are from my personal experience too that I have experimented and implemented at my time of work.
1 .Images are better than thousands words in explaining yourself-It’s correct, but it does not mean that you truckload your website with images only. Many net users have dial-up connections and heavy images take time to load. This increases the load time and make user impatient.
2. Make your website a master piece but what would be the use if the user will not be able to navigate trough your website. Navigation and functionality are other important areas where one should focus.
3. Avoid complaints of Mystery Meat Navigation( You don’t realize a link is a link until you do not hover your mouse).
4. There are many browsers which are coming. You may not know which browser your site visitor is using so if your site is not working on some particular browser you can inform your user by putting notice on your site. This will help your user not to loose his temper and fly away from your site. Instead he may open your site on requested browser.
5. 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
Now suppose you have a website which sells stuff online. Being a vendor, a website is your only medium to talk to your target audience and for that it must not be biased to some particular browser. This could cut half of your prospects, resulting a dip in the probability of making a sale.
Web Designing is, in my opinion, an optimum mix of creative skills & technical prowess – and one is no less important than the other. Below are the few points that I have read from some good valuable articles and blogs. Some are from my personal experience too that I have experimented and implemented at my time of work.
1 .Images are better than thousands words in explaining yourself-It’s correct, but it does not mean that you truckload your website with images only. Many net users have dial-up connections and heavy images take time to load. This increases the load time and make user impatient.
2. Make your website a master piece but what would be the use if the user will not be able to navigate trough your website. Navigation and functionality are other important areas where one should focus.
3. Avoid complaints of Mystery Meat Navigation( You don’t realize a link is a link until you do not hover your mouse).
4. There are many browsers which are coming. You may not know which browser your site visitor is using so if your site is not working on some particular browser you can inform your user by putting notice on your site. This will help your user not to loose his temper and fly away from your site. Instead he may open your site on requested browser.
5. 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
Monday, May 25, 2009
Web Site Designing And Optimization
Web site designing is a creative process and we believe creation demands personalization of your website with utmost professionalism.
At Infact solutuons our talented group of designers and interface engineers are masters at effectively conveying a consistent corporate message and brand while concentrating on ensuring a pleasant and useful user experience. We can help you effectively market your company by utilizing our skills in web strategy, creative interface design, corporate branding and logo design, online marketing strategy, and copywriting, among others.
Infactsolutions.com gives you a beautiful surface to display features of your business presentably. We are here for you and with you to provide professional website design solutions.
Infactsolutions has a team of experienced multi media and web designers for professional web site designing who work closely with our programming team to integrate the various components with a consistent look and feel that represents your corporate brand image. We know the importance of a "first web impression" in web site design and our experienced team will advise you on how best to take advantage of changing trends and expectations.
In addition to full design from ground up, Infactsolutions can also offer specialized component development which can easily be added to your existing Internet infrastructure. Our technology team will assess your current functionality and will offer the best professional web site designing to take your site to the next level while preserving previous investments and operations.
Infactsolutions' professional web site designing solutions offer a powerful combination of design and technology. This comprehensive set of online e business application development solution is designed to help you make the most of your new or existing business.
At Infact solutuons our talented group of designers and interface engineers are masters at effectively conveying a consistent corporate message and brand while concentrating on ensuring a pleasant and useful user experience. We can help you effectively market your company by utilizing our skills in web strategy, creative interface design, corporate branding and logo design, online marketing strategy, and copywriting, among others.
Infactsolutions.com gives you a beautiful surface to display features of your business presentably. We are here for you and with you to provide professional website design solutions.
Infactsolutions has a team of experienced multi media and web designers for professional web site designing who work closely with our programming team to integrate the various components with a consistent look and feel that represents your corporate brand image. We know the importance of a "first web impression" in web site design and our experienced team will advise you on how best to take advantage of changing trends and expectations.
In addition to full design from ground up, Infactsolutions can also offer specialized component development which can easily be added to your existing Internet infrastructure. Our technology team will assess your current functionality and will offer the best professional web site designing to take your site to the next level while preserving previous investments and operations.
Infactsolutions' professional web site designing solutions offer a powerful combination of design and technology. This comprehensive set of online e business application development solution is designed to help you make the most of your new or existing business.
Designing Your Website For Affiliate Marketing
If you want to be successful as an affiliate marketer, you have to have your own website. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it does need to look professional.
Have you seen those websites that are completely filled with banners? I call them banner farms. How many of those banners do you think that YOU would click on? Enough said!
Now that you know that you need a website, how do you get one? The first thing you need is a domain name. Ideally, it should contain the main keywords of your website's topic. But, you can start with using your own name - or a variation of it.
You will also need website hosting. Somewhere your website files can reside. There are many web hosting companies, but be careful that you get one that is reputable. Ask some of your online acquaintances who they use.
What about the design itself? I believe that simple is best, especially when you're not quite sure what you are doing. All you really need is a nice header set in a simple template.
One of the most difficult tasks for a new affiliate marketer is to learn how to create and maintain his or her own website. But, there is software available these days that makes it almost easy. You can also use Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is pretty expensive, and difficult to learn, for a beginner. You could also host your website with a company that has a "Site Builder," complete with design templates, included with the package. You just point, click and type in your content.
Some affiliate programs will provide you with an affiliate website that you can promote. The problem with these sites is that there is no way to build your own mailing list. Building your list is the number one reason you need your own website.
If you really believe that it's impossible for you to learn how to "do it yourself," there are many designers that you can find online that you can hire to do it for you. However, you still should learn how to add your content and affiliate product html codes yourself because it can get very expensive to have a designer do it for you.
You can do a Google search for "website designers" to find someone. There can be quite a difference in their fees so do a comparison among them. Look at their design portfolio and then make a list of the top ten (or so) companies or individuals that you are interested in. Record their fee, what all is included in their design package, and their contact information. Contact them to see if they are responsive to your inquiry. Compare them and then choose - carefully- the one you want.
In the long run, it doesn't matter how you get your website built, as long as you build one. It IS necessary to your long-term affiliate marketing success.
Have you seen those websites that are completely filled with banners? I call them banner farms. How many of those banners do you think that YOU would click on? Enough said!
Now that you know that you need a website, how do you get one? The first thing you need is a domain name. Ideally, it should contain the main keywords of your website's topic. But, you can start with using your own name - or a variation of it.
You will also need website hosting. Somewhere your website files can reside. There are many web hosting companies, but be careful that you get one that is reputable. Ask some of your online acquaintances who they use.
What about the design itself? I believe that simple is best, especially when you're not quite sure what you are doing. All you really need is a nice header set in a simple template.
One of the most difficult tasks for a new affiliate marketer is to learn how to create and maintain his or her own website. But, there is software available these days that makes it almost easy. You can also use Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is pretty expensive, and difficult to learn, for a beginner. You could also host your website with a company that has a "Site Builder," complete with design templates, included with the package. You just point, click and type in your content.
Some affiliate programs will provide you with an affiliate website that you can promote. The problem with these sites is that there is no way to build your own mailing list. Building your list is the number one reason you need your own website.
If you really believe that it's impossible for you to learn how to "do it yourself," there are many designers that you can find online that you can hire to do it for you. However, you still should learn how to add your content and affiliate product html codes yourself because it can get very expensive to have a designer do it for you.
You can do a Google search for "website designers" to find someone. There can be quite a difference in their fees so do a comparison among them. Look at their design portfolio and then make a list of the top ten (or so) companies or individuals that you are interested in. Record their fee, what all is included in their design package, and their contact information. Contact them to see if they are responsive to your inquiry. Compare them and then choose - carefully- the one you want.
In the long run, it doesn't matter how you get your website built, as long as you build one. It IS necessary to your long-term affiliate marketing success.
Designing For Web Browsers
Web design is always a challenge: new web browsers make website owners to turn to web designers to redesign their web pages; different web browsers display websites in different ways, leading to the same problem: redesign. This is costly, needs time and if the job is not done right, the release of a new web browser may lead to the same trouble. Moreover: a non-standard-compliant website is not a user friendly website (obviously!) and it might damage your business, by driving your visitors away.
To avoid the inconvenience, ask your web developer to create an “all browsers compatible” website.
Design for All the Web Browsers
It’s advisable that you have your website designed according to the World Wide Web Consortium’s accessibility standards. These standards were created to improve user experience and Internet functionality. The most popular web browsers are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari (for Mac) and Konqueror (Linux). Once upon a time there was Netscape ruling over the Web. Right now Internet Explorer (IE 6) is the most popular browser, but Firefox is winning territory… fast! However, let’s not forget the PDAs! If you have a website designed according to the accessibility standards, your site will stay functional in the future.
As IE 6 is not standards compliant, you might want to try designing for Firefox first. Preferred coding is XHTML, but HTML 4.01 will do too. When your web page looks great in Firefox, you may start editing it for Internet Explorer. Then validate your markup. Don’t write on your website “best viewed with Mozilla Firefox” or “Best viewed with IE”, etc. It’s you who should have a browser compatible website and not your visitors who should change their browsers to be able to see your website. Write a “best viewed with…” on your landing page and you are going to drive customers away. User-friendly websites are “best viewed with any browser”.
Design for the Future
Standard compliant web pages are the pages of the future. The Internet is constantly evolving and the future belongs to quality websites. Now it’s the right time to start optimizing your websites. If you are a web developer take your job seriously and design for the future. This is how you are going to build up a good name and get more clients.
Webmasters are advised to support the “best viewed with any browser campaign”. By creating an all browsers compatible website you make a promise of quality and a commitment to excellence.
To verify your “any browser compatibility” you might want to try the free services provided by AnyBrowser.com. Here you’ll find a site viewer, html validation tools and many useful resources that will help you create the perfect website.
Other Technical Considerations
When you use non-HTML elements, remember that they are not compatible with all browsers, so provide alternatives. That works especially for Flash sites. I’ve seen a lot of “to view this web page you need Macromedia Flash” on websites. Do I really need it? Make me! Well, actually they cannot make me. Why? I can leave as fast as I came. I browse… browse away!
To avoid the inconvenience, ask your web developer to create an “all browsers compatible” website.
Design for All the Web Browsers
It’s advisable that you have your website designed according to the World Wide Web Consortium’s accessibility standards. These standards were created to improve user experience and Internet functionality. The most popular web browsers are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari (for Mac) and Konqueror (Linux). Once upon a time there was Netscape ruling over the Web. Right now Internet Explorer (IE 6) is the most popular browser, but Firefox is winning territory… fast! However, let’s not forget the PDAs! If you have a website designed according to the accessibility standards, your site will stay functional in the future.
As IE 6 is not standards compliant, you might want to try designing for Firefox first. Preferred coding is XHTML, but HTML 4.01 will do too. When your web page looks great in Firefox, you may start editing it for Internet Explorer. Then validate your markup. Don’t write on your website “best viewed with Mozilla Firefox” or “Best viewed with IE”, etc. It’s you who should have a browser compatible website and not your visitors who should change their browsers to be able to see your website. Write a “best viewed with…” on your landing page and you are going to drive customers away. User-friendly websites are “best viewed with any browser”.
Design for the Future
Standard compliant web pages are the pages of the future. The Internet is constantly evolving and the future belongs to quality websites. Now it’s the right time to start optimizing your websites. If you are a web developer take your job seriously and design for the future. This is how you are going to build up a good name and get more clients.
Webmasters are advised to support the “best viewed with any browser campaign”. By creating an all browsers compatible website you make a promise of quality and a commitment to excellence.
To verify your “any browser compatibility” you might want to try the free services provided by AnyBrowser.com. Here you’ll find a site viewer, html validation tools and many useful resources that will help you create the perfect website.
Other Technical Considerations
When you use non-HTML elements, remember that they are not compatible with all browsers, so provide alternatives. That works especially for Flash sites. I’ve seen a lot of “to view this web page you need Macromedia Flash” on websites. Do I really need it? Make me! Well, actually they cannot make me. Why? I can leave as fast as I came. I browse… browse away!
When To Let Go Of Your Website Designing Ideas
As hard as it may be, but letting go of your website designing ideas and listening to the customer may actually be of benefit in the long run.
I know what you are saying, you’ve been in the web designing business long enough to know what works and wont doesn’t, what would my customer know? Well after approaching web design in the same manner, I’ve unfortunately had no other choice but to give in to my best laid plans and comply with the wishes of my customers.
Construction of good websites usually means that it has to be appealing to the eye, as well as being fully functioning for Search Engine benefits, but ultimately it must display professionalism for the business represented.
Complying with W3C Standards (W3C Markup Validation Service) for both HTML and CSS validation is paramount to good design and programming (but not necessary for good Google PR, I will discuss in later posts), so when designing we like to use base HTML formatting and CSS text font like Tahoma 11pt, to make neat easy to read text and nice page image layouts.
I will list some cases of where letting go has benefits for both parties involved and how in some circumstances actually resulted in little or no web traffic for the website.
Case Study 1. Architectural Firm flash and font matters
Our customer wanted the use of Flash elements to display several architecture images with a nice fade between images and changes to original CSS Font used Tahoma 11pt font and replaced with Century Gothic 11pt, which is used in all their logos and architecture design work.
As most would know embedding Flash files into your website results in W3C Validation undefined source failure, thus rendering the site Invalid Markup. After explaining this, the customer felt the need to have a nice graphical flash style image far outweighed the importance of quality valid HTML Transitional Markup. To them the appearance and perception of their website to their customers was far more advantageous than complying with the W3C.
In addition they wanted the use of the Century Gothic font rather than Tahoma. By design Century Gothic has a much larger font height than Tahoma and when used increased the page height larger than when using Tahoma thus resulting in the site displaying with scroll bars when view under 1024 x 768 resolution, where previously it fitted in the whole page perfectly.
In the end the customer achieved the desired affects they wanted and ultimately it is the customer who ‘always’ knows best.
Case Study 2. Box supplier becomes boxed in
Our customer had started a new business supplying cardboard boxes for moving and packing. They wanted a simple site with heavy graphical image elements and little or no text on the home page.
Explaining to the customer the role of text based search engines results and that having no ‘readable text’ on the home page would limit their visibility, they choose design over results.
Why you may ask would a company limit their possibilities of being found on search engines? Well the question still burns with us too, but as mentioned earlier the ‘customer always knows best’ and the decision was solely theirs to make.
Their philosophy was simple, their website was purely to be used as a reference guide and not the source of extra business, as their marketing strategies would be enough to garner constant business.
To this day I still wonder why they limited their marketability and in particular their website which is always online and can be searched at all times of the day.
So in summary the best laid plans of mice and men (well in this case web designers) can be a utter waste of good management as what I have stated all along that the ‘customer always knows best’ and ultimately they are the ones paying for your service so sometimes its best to lay down your guns and concede defeat.
I know what you are saying, you’ve been in the web designing business long enough to know what works and wont doesn’t, what would my customer know? Well after approaching web design in the same manner, I’ve unfortunately had no other choice but to give in to my best laid plans and comply with the wishes of my customers.
Construction of good websites usually means that it has to be appealing to the eye, as well as being fully functioning for Search Engine benefits, but ultimately it must display professionalism for the business represented.
Complying with W3C Standards (W3C Markup Validation Service) for both HTML and CSS validation is paramount to good design and programming (but not necessary for good Google PR, I will discuss in later posts), so when designing we like to use base HTML formatting and CSS text font like Tahoma 11pt, to make neat easy to read text and nice page image layouts.
I will list some cases of where letting go has benefits for both parties involved and how in some circumstances actually resulted in little or no web traffic for the website.
Case Study 1. Architectural Firm flash and font matters
Our customer wanted the use of Flash elements to display several architecture images with a nice fade between images and changes to original CSS Font used Tahoma 11pt font and replaced with Century Gothic 11pt, which is used in all their logos and architecture design work.
As most would know embedding Flash files into your website results in W3C Validation undefined source failure, thus rendering the site Invalid Markup. After explaining this, the customer felt the need to have a nice graphical flash style image far outweighed the importance of quality valid HTML Transitional Markup. To them the appearance and perception of their website to their customers was far more advantageous than complying with the W3C.
In addition they wanted the use of the Century Gothic font rather than Tahoma. By design Century Gothic has a much larger font height than Tahoma and when used increased the page height larger than when using Tahoma thus resulting in the site displaying with scroll bars when view under 1024 x 768 resolution, where previously it fitted in the whole page perfectly.
In the end the customer achieved the desired affects they wanted and ultimately it is the customer who ‘always’ knows best.
Case Study 2. Box supplier becomes boxed in
Our customer had started a new business supplying cardboard boxes for moving and packing. They wanted a simple site with heavy graphical image elements and little or no text on the home page.
Explaining to the customer the role of text based search engines results and that having no ‘readable text’ on the home page would limit their visibility, they choose design over results.
Why you may ask would a company limit their possibilities of being found on search engines? Well the question still burns with us too, but as mentioned earlier the ‘customer always knows best’ and the decision was solely theirs to make.
Their philosophy was simple, their website was purely to be used as a reference guide and not the source of extra business, as their marketing strategies would be enough to garner constant business.
To this day I still wonder why they limited their marketability and in particular their website which is always online and can be searched at all times of the day.
So in summary the best laid plans of mice and men (well in this case web designers) can be a utter waste of good management as what I have stated all along that the ‘customer always knows best’ and ultimately they are the ones paying for your service so sometimes its best to lay down your guns and concede defeat.
Top Tips for Search Engine Friendly Web Site Designing
Want to have a flashy web site for your business. Will your flashy web site will be able to bring you good business. Read about how you can make your web site more search engine friendly and generate good ROI.
Designing a website that also ranks well in search engine results is a job that requires a blend of art, creativity and optimization. Wondering what a web site designing has got to do with the optimization of a web site or its ranking, then I must tell you that 40% of ranking positions are increase because of web site design. Web site designing is not restricted to Photoshop and Fireworks, rather a good website designer must build a superior architecture of the website. Below are few features that a web site designer must take care of while designing a website.
1. Do not use browser specific functions, as all users may not have the same browser installed on their machine.
2. Use small and less images, if it is mandatory to use bigger images then slice them and keep in mind point 1.
3. Always mention the height and width of the images in the code part. It helps browser calculate the space needed to be left for the images and the rest of the page can get downloaded faster.
4. Do not forget to put ALT tag on all images, sometimes few images are unable to appear especially if the connection is slow.
5. Try to keep the average page size less than 30 KB. On an optimum basis the page should not take longer than 5 sec to download.
6. Try to avoid “Mystery Meat Navigation”. Keep your links highlighted so that user at least knows where to click to navigate to other pages. Try to keep navigation easy for users.
7. Display the path of the pages on the navigation to help user know where they are.
8. Keep the design simple and soothing. Colors that are too bright and too many flashes may distract the users, beyond making your site too slow.
9. Do not use too much plug-ins and fancy fonts. Sometimes user may not have installed the fonts you are using on your webpage in that case your page will appear to him in ‘Times New Roman’.
10. You can split your page in two or more tables for fast processing. Like you can put header in one table, body in another and footer in the third table. This will help some part of the page (with small table) to download especially with slow connections, inspiring the user to become more patient.
Thus it makes sense that designing a website in not enough. It should score up to certain requirements in order to rank fast and high in the search engine results. With many new or existing businesses wishing to exploit the incredible potential of the internet, it is important to have a professionally designed and maintained web site. You must get your site w3c certified in order to be search engine friendly. A w3c certified site can be easily crawled by the search engines. Now time has arrived to improve your site design and results and increase your traffic and ROI.
Designing a website that also ranks well in search engine results is a job that requires a blend of art, creativity and optimization. Wondering what a web site designing has got to do with the optimization of a web site or its ranking, then I must tell you that 40% of ranking positions are increase because of web site design. Web site designing is not restricted to Photoshop and Fireworks, rather a good website designer must build a superior architecture of the website. Below are few features that a web site designer must take care of while designing a website.
1. Do not use browser specific functions, as all users may not have the same browser installed on their machine.
2. Use small and less images, if it is mandatory to use bigger images then slice them and keep in mind point 1.
3. Always mention the height and width of the images in the code part. It helps browser calculate the space needed to be left for the images and the rest of the page can get downloaded faster.
4. Do not forget to put ALT tag on all images, sometimes few images are unable to appear especially if the connection is slow.
5. Try to keep the average page size less than 30 KB. On an optimum basis the page should not take longer than 5 sec to download.
6. Try to avoid “Mystery Meat Navigation”. Keep your links highlighted so that user at least knows where to click to navigate to other pages. Try to keep navigation easy for users.
7. Display the path of the pages on the navigation to help user know where they are.
8. Keep the design simple and soothing. Colors that are too bright and too many flashes may distract the users, beyond making your site too slow.
9. Do not use too much plug-ins and fancy fonts. Sometimes user may not have installed the fonts you are using on your webpage in that case your page will appear to him in ‘Times New Roman’.
10. You can split your page in two or more tables for fast processing. Like you can put header in one table, body in another and footer in the third table. This will help some part of the page (with small table) to download especially with slow connections, inspiring the user to become more patient.
Thus it makes sense that designing a website in not enough. It should score up to certain requirements in order to rank fast and high in the search engine results. With many new or existing businesses wishing to exploit the incredible potential of the internet, it is important to have a professionally designed and maintained web site. You must get your site w3c certified in order to be search engine friendly. A w3c certified site can be easily crawled by the search engines. Now time has arrived to improve your site design and results and increase your traffic and ROI.
How To Learn Designing Your First Website
In learning web design, HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is something you must know, WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) HTML editor is something you must have and CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is some big treasure to you which deserves burying yourself into it deeper and deeper.
HTML is a common language for building and designing website. It tells the Internet browsers like Internet Explorer or Firefox how to display web content on the screen via HTML tags. In fact, everything you see on the web is under the control of HTML. What is HTML editor? It is a software like Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage which helps you to create websites even though you know nothing about HTML.
WOW! Does it mean by using HTML editor, you need not learn HTML yourself?? NOT necessarily. Below I’ll explain why and will also talk about some learning tips.
HTML
As I told you earlier, everything you see on the web is under the instructions written in HTML. Therefore, HTML editors also create webpages using HTML. The difference is that when you use HTML editor, you just have to click the buttons to "draw" webpages as you see on screen (What-You-See) and then HTML editor writes the HTML tags for you to display the webpages on web browser in exactly the same form (What-You-Get). However, it always happens that HTML editors write clumsy HTML tags, especially when you amend the webpage layout again and again during your website designing process, which may possibly deter search engines from reading your web page and in turn poorly affect your search engine ranking. What's worse, your website cannot even be listed in search engines at all! The clumsy HTML codings will also increase your file size and hence the loading time, encouraging visitors to leave your website soon. Therefore, you should understand HTML to unable yourself to modify the HTML codes produced by WYSIWYG HTML editors. Besides, in the designing perspective, there are also some design limitations and restrictions using HTML editors when compared to free writing of HTML codes. If you would like some special design or custom look to your webpages, you are recommended to have some knowledge on HTML yourself. In more advanced level, if you are to do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your web page, you should know how to make use of meta tags like title, content, alt, header, etc. in order to attain better keyword positions in search engines. If you just happen to own a website designed by others, you should learn HTML in order to edit the context of your website without the need to depend on someone else in this simple but routine updating task. Or you have no website yet but you like to write articles to be displayed in others' websites, you also should learn HTML in order to create appropriate links in your articles for others' easy reference.
Tips: If you have already got some basic knowledge on HTML, you may study “Getting Started With HTML” which is the most popular free HTML tutorials online provided by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which develops interoperable technologies including specifications, guidelines, software and tools to lead the Web to its full potential. If you still find the above tutorials too difficult or boring to start with or your time being too limited, “One Hour HTML” is highly recommended for you. It is a practical program to take you step by step in learning HTML from the very beginning and it offers you hands-on HTML encoding experience instead of merely teaching you theories so that you could have already experienced creating webpage using HTML as early as in the first hour of learning.
WYSIWYG HTML Editor
Indeed, despite my understanding on HTML, like many other web designers, I like to use WYSIWYG HTML editor such as Dreamweaver a lot and in fact, I can't even think of living without it once I encountered it as it saves me so much time in writing the complex HTML codes and the best advantage is that i can immediately visualize the effect in the splitted WYSIWYG designing screen whenever I change the HTML codings above in the HTML encoding screen! I am not contradicting myself. In fact, the key to make use WYSIWYG HTML editor software is that you have to learn the software well and to use its buttons for quick and easy HTML editing yet you don't let the software generated HTML codes to take the control but it is you who know how to master all HTML tags and to make any necessary changes to the HTML tags in order to bring the best visual and seo benefits to your website. Among all HTML editors in the market, Dreamweaver and Frontpage are the most popular ones. Dreamweaver is very popular among professional web designers while Frontpage is popular for small enterprise users. Dreamweaver has more user-friendly features than Frontpage which include its seamless integration with Flash, its automatic generation of closing tags once you enter the opening tags, the fact that it would not automatically re-write your codings like Frontpage does when you save an external HTML page not created by Frontpage, etc. Despite less user-friendly features, Frontpage is a Microsoft Office's tool which many of you will be familiar with and it is fine enough for creating or editing websites for small projects.
Tips: If you have never encountered HTML editors before, you may download the free trial provided by Macromedia. There are a few good Dreamweaver tutorials in the market. Among those, “Tutorials-4-You” and “Dreamweaver Made Simple” are two more popular ones due to the interactive nature of their video tutorials, giving Dreamweaver beginners hands on experience in using Dreamweaver from the very beginning of the tutorials. For Tutorials-4-You, a free demo is offered for you to experience the tutorials yourself and you can choose the version of Dreamweaver in meeting your practical needs. For Dreamweaver Made Simple, you are offered free download of a few chapters of the videos plus the ebook. Why not giving a try? It's free and for sure you'll have a lot of fun!
CSS
Aha! So it comes the time for CSS. If you are using HTML editors like Dreamweaver, indeed you are using CSS and creating styles yourself without even your noticing it! Wait, so you may ask, why do I need to learn CSS when I am able to create styles even without my own notice using an HTML editor? I can just tell you the answer is - "magics". Yes yes, CSS is indeed a magic and it also creates many magics. But are you satisfied if you are just able to perform one of the many magics of CSS? Your answer is surely NO. Let me tell you what the CSS magics are.
CSS Magic #1:
- You no longer need to rewrite the same set of presentation style attributes like font color, background style, alignment, border, size, etc. repeatedly within the HTML codings but can group the set of attributes into a single style class within the stylesheet. In your HTML document, you just have to call it out using the style name. CSS is well designed to allow the separation of presentation style from the main content and a stylesheet can either be included inline as part of the HTML document or referenced externally as a CSS file. (So you may have already tried this magic from Dreamweaver)
CSS Magic #2:
- You now have great control over how your website looks and can change the presentation of hundreds or even thousands of your web pages by altering just one file (i.e. your stylesheet!) if it is referenced externally as a single source by your different web pages instead of being contained inline in each one of your web page. Presentation information including positioning, layout, font, color, etc. for your entire website can be contained in this single CSS file.
CSS Magic #3:
- You can eliminate the use of table to be nested inside some more tables for your web design layout anymore as you may now use the CSS file to control the positioning of all elements inside your website. Spiders no longer have to crawl through each one of your tables and page loading time can be much faster as visitors only have to download the lightweight stylesheet once and it is automatically reused for every page. What’s remained to be loaded is the actual HTML content which is now much smaller in size and hence your website can be made visible in a flash! What’s more, you can now get rid of a lot of complicated codes with tables and so your site code can be cleaner and neater for prior view and amendment.
CSS Magic#4:
- You can use CSS to place your important keyword phrases at top of your web pages which search engines love before other of your source code. In such a way, you can gain search engine ranking benefits as search engines like Google gives more weight to content closer to the top of your HTML document and now search engines can pick up the main content of your website first before your header images or navigation menus.
CSS Magic#5:
- You can use CSS to simulate some beautiful javascript effects like rollover buttons in your website design. Yet, you need not have any images visible on your html codes which will slow down your page loading time and you need not worry about visitors turning off javascript in eliminating pop-ups as for now, all are done just inside your CSS file instead of your HTML documents. Actually CSS can bring about much more than the above 5 magics. As I said in the first paragraph, learning CSS is not a "must" but you can certainly perform magics in your website when you know it more and more. Moreover, using CSS is a trend in web design and it is also conforming to future web standard in letting your website compatible with different browsers and making it much easier to be spidered by different search engines.
Tips: I myself am learning it right a way and I find myself like a magician whenever I learn to eliminate the long HTML tags and replace them using CSS! I have done many researches on CSS tutorials and I find “How To Master CSS” of such a high quality and it meets my needs so well! It is a CSS know-it-all, teaching me all I need to master CSS in simple languages and how to use CSS to its full potential. Its step-by-step training videos and comprehensive CSS book are my favourites and it is even used by school teachers in teaching web design in class! It’s really worth a try if you are to learn CSS yourself. There is also a 100% risk-free money back guarantee, as for other professional web design related tutorials that I recommended. But I’m sure you won’t need it after your first trial on the tutorial! If you want a free tutorial regarding some basics of CSS instead, I would recommend “Adding A Touch Of Style” which is also provided by the reputable World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Conclusion
Building and designing website is not as difficult as you think. It just takes you hours to start with but of course it takes more time for your further practices. However, it will become your valuable asset for life once you've acquired the skill and got to know the crack. Don't you hesitate anymore. Start learning it today!
HTML is a common language for building and designing website. It tells the Internet browsers like Internet Explorer or Firefox how to display web content on the screen via HTML tags. In fact, everything you see on the web is under the control of HTML. What is HTML editor? It is a software like Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage which helps you to create websites even though you know nothing about HTML.
WOW! Does it mean by using HTML editor, you need not learn HTML yourself?? NOT necessarily. Below I’ll explain why and will also talk about some learning tips.
HTML
As I told you earlier, everything you see on the web is under the instructions written in HTML. Therefore, HTML editors also create webpages using HTML. The difference is that when you use HTML editor, you just have to click the buttons to "draw" webpages as you see on screen (What-You-See) and then HTML editor writes the HTML tags for you to display the webpages on web browser in exactly the same form (What-You-Get). However, it always happens that HTML editors write clumsy HTML tags, especially when you amend the webpage layout again and again during your website designing process, which may possibly deter search engines from reading your web page and in turn poorly affect your search engine ranking. What's worse, your website cannot even be listed in search engines at all! The clumsy HTML codings will also increase your file size and hence the loading time, encouraging visitors to leave your website soon. Therefore, you should understand HTML to unable yourself to modify the HTML codes produced by WYSIWYG HTML editors. Besides, in the designing perspective, there are also some design limitations and restrictions using HTML editors when compared to free writing of HTML codes. If you would like some special design or custom look to your webpages, you are recommended to have some knowledge on HTML yourself. In more advanced level, if you are to do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your web page, you should know how to make use of meta tags like title, content, alt, header, etc. in order to attain better keyword positions in search engines. If you just happen to own a website designed by others, you should learn HTML in order to edit the context of your website without the need to depend on someone else in this simple but routine updating task. Or you have no website yet but you like to write articles to be displayed in others' websites, you also should learn HTML in order to create appropriate links in your articles for others' easy reference.
Tips: If you have already got some basic knowledge on HTML, you may study “Getting Started With HTML” which is the most popular free HTML tutorials online provided by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which develops interoperable technologies including specifications, guidelines, software and tools to lead the Web to its full potential. If you still find the above tutorials too difficult or boring to start with or your time being too limited, “One Hour HTML” is highly recommended for you. It is a practical program to take you step by step in learning HTML from the very beginning and it offers you hands-on HTML encoding experience instead of merely teaching you theories so that you could have already experienced creating webpage using HTML as early as in the first hour of learning.
WYSIWYG HTML Editor
Indeed, despite my understanding on HTML, like many other web designers, I like to use WYSIWYG HTML editor such as Dreamweaver a lot and in fact, I can't even think of living without it once I encountered it as it saves me so much time in writing the complex HTML codes and the best advantage is that i can immediately visualize the effect in the splitted WYSIWYG designing screen whenever I change the HTML codings above in the HTML encoding screen! I am not contradicting myself. In fact, the key to make use WYSIWYG HTML editor software is that you have to learn the software well and to use its buttons for quick and easy HTML editing yet you don't let the software generated HTML codes to take the control but it is you who know how to master all HTML tags and to make any necessary changes to the HTML tags in order to bring the best visual and seo benefits to your website. Among all HTML editors in the market, Dreamweaver and Frontpage are the most popular ones. Dreamweaver is very popular among professional web designers while Frontpage is popular for small enterprise users. Dreamweaver has more user-friendly features than Frontpage which include its seamless integration with Flash, its automatic generation of closing tags once you enter the opening tags, the fact that it would not automatically re-write your codings like Frontpage does when you save an external HTML page not created by Frontpage, etc. Despite less user-friendly features, Frontpage is a Microsoft Office's tool which many of you will be familiar with and it is fine enough for creating or editing websites for small projects.
Tips: If you have never encountered HTML editors before, you may download the free trial provided by Macromedia. There are a few good Dreamweaver tutorials in the market. Among those, “Tutorials-4-You” and “Dreamweaver Made Simple” are two more popular ones due to the interactive nature of their video tutorials, giving Dreamweaver beginners hands on experience in using Dreamweaver from the very beginning of the tutorials. For Tutorials-4-You, a free demo is offered for you to experience the tutorials yourself and you can choose the version of Dreamweaver in meeting your practical needs. For Dreamweaver Made Simple, you are offered free download of a few chapters of the videos plus the ebook. Why not giving a try? It's free and for sure you'll have a lot of fun!
CSS
Aha! So it comes the time for CSS. If you are using HTML editors like Dreamweaver, indeed you are using CSS and creating styles yourself without even your noticing it! Wait, so you may ask, why do I need to learn CSS when I am able to create styles even without my own notice using an HTML editor? I can just tell you the answer is - "magics". Yes yes, CSS is indeed a magic and it also creates many magics. But are you satisfied if you are just able to perform one of the many magics of CSS? Your answer is surely NO. Let me tell you what the CSS magics are.
CSS Magic #1:
- You no longer need to rewrite the same set of presentation style attributes like font color, background style, alignment, border, size, etc. repeatedly within the HTML codings but can group the set of attributes into a single style class within the stylesheet. In your HTML document, you just have to call it out using the style name. CSS is well designed to allow the separation of presentation style from the main content and a stylesheet can either be included inline as part of the HTML document or referenced externally as a CSS file. (So you may have already tried this magic from Dreamweaver)
CSS Magic #2:
- You now have great control over how your website looks and can change the presentation of hundreds or even thousands of your web pages by altering just one file (i.e. your stylesheet!) if it is referenced externally as a single source by your different web pages instead of being contained inline in each one of your web page. Presentation information including positioning, layout, font, color, etc. for your entire website can be contained in this single CSS file.
CSS Magic #3:
- You can eliminate the use of table to be nested inside some more tables for your web design layout anymore as you may now use the CSS file to control the positioning of all elements inside your website. Spiders no longer have to crawl through each one of your tables and page loading time can be much faster as visitors only have to download the lightweight stylesheet once and it is automatically reused for every page. What’s remained to be loaded is the actual HTML content which is now much smaller in size and hence your website can be made visible in a flash! What’s more, you can now get rid of a lot of complicated codes with tables and so your site code can be cleaner and neater for prior view and amendment.
CSS Magic#4:
- You can use CSS to place your important keyword phrases at top of your web pages which search engines love before other of your source code. In such a way, you can gain search engine ranking benefits as search engines like Google gives more weight to content closer to the top of your HTML document and now search engines can pick up the main content of your website first before your header images or navigation menus.
CSS Magic#5:
- You can use CSS to simulate some beautiful javascript effects like rollover buttons in your website design. Yet, you need not have any images visible on your html codes which will slow down your page loading time and you need not worry about visitors turning off javascript in eliminating pop-ups as for now, all are done just inside your CSS file instead of your HTML documents. Actually CSS can bring about much more than the above 5 magics. As I said in the first paragraph, learning CSS is not a "must" but you can certainly perform magics in your website when you know it more and more. Moreover, using CSS is a trend in web design and it is also conforming to future web standard in letting your website compatible with different browsers and making it much easier to be spidered by different search engines.
Tips: I myself am learning it right a way and I find myself like a magician whenever I learn to eliminate the long HTML tags and replace them using CSS! I have done many researches on CSS tutorials and I find “How To Master CSS” of such a high quality and it meets my needs so well! It is a CSS know-it-all, teaching me all I need to master CSS in simple languages and how to use CSS to its full potential. Its step-by-step training videos and comprehensive CSS book are my favourites and it is even used by school teachers in teaching web design in class! It’s really worth a try if you are to learn CSS yourself. There is also a 100% risk-free money back guarantee, as for other professional web design related tutorials that I recommended. But I’m sure you won’t need it after your first trial on the tutorial! If you want a free tutorial regarding some basics of CSS instead, I would recommend “Adding A Touch Of Style” which is also provided by the reputable World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Conclusion
Building and designing website is not as difficult as you think. It just takes you hours to start with but of course it takes more time for your further practices. However, it will become your valuable asset for life once you've acquired the skill and got to know the crack. Don't you hesitate anymore. Start learning it today!
Advantages and Disadvantages Of Using Web Templates or WYSIWYG Editors For Web Designing
This article discusses the pros and cons of using website templates and WYSIWYG editors to design web pages as against traditional web programming. This article is intended for novice web developers and prospective website owners.
Template based web page development:
A lot of people get tempted by good looking web templates. Some template vendors even offer do-it-yourself kits to their customers. Web templates are designed by experts, using the latest designing software. They look stunning, compared to web pages developed by other means. While readymade templates offer several advantages, they have some disadvantages too.
Advantages of using templates:
1. You know how your finished site looks. You can choose the template that appeals to you. You need not rely on a web developer to get a good looking website.
2. Faster turnaround. You need not spend a lot of time on getting the colors and layout right. You can go straight to changing text and proceed with programming.
3. Templates are much cheaper than hiring a web developer. There are several sites that offer free templates as well.
4. Templates look much better than sites developed in traditional HTML programming. Templates are designed by professionals that are creative and competent and experienced.
5. Templates can be customized by anyone with basic HTML knowledge. You can customize the template yourself using a text editor.
Disadvantages of using templates:
1. You can get web templates for free or at a low-price. But these templates are not unique. Several people may have already bought or downloaded the template you have chosen. If you cant change the colors or layout a bit, your site looks like a clone of several sites. If you want a unique template design licensed only to you, you need to spend a fortune on it.
2. Often, templates don’t look good if you stretch them a bit. For example, if there is space for 100 words in a block and if you try to insert 200 words in that space, the template layout may change. And this may not look good. This puts limitations on text you can place in a template based web page, thereby restricting you from optimizing text or being descriptive about your business. It is well known that the more verbose in a page the more attention it gets from search engines. A template doesn’t come with Meta tags. You need to insert these meta tags.
3. Templates are good for static pages. If a site needs dynamic pages with a huge database to built, you need to opt for simpler templates.
4. If you are doing customization for yourself, always work on a copy of the template files. Templates are often done with simple HTML. But if you try to edit HTML tags instead of text between them, you might end up with bad page layout.
5. If there are template files with .tpl extension, locate the files where variables are defined. Then try to establish the logic behind the file system.
Using WYSIWYG editors:
Nowadays, several WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors are available for creating web pages. With these editors it is possible to create good looking pages simply by dragging and dropping objects on the page, without any HTML knowledge. They come with a lot of menu options. If you are familiar with windows objects or windows based software, you can create a web page in time.
Advantages of using a WYSIWYG editor:
1. It's great fun to create web pages this way. You can do it yourself, experimenting with colors and layouts. The web page is likely to be unique, unless you are trying to clone another web page. You can stretch your imagination.
2. It’s faster and easier to create web pages. You can make changes to a page layout by simply dragging the objects to their new positions.
3. You can make changes to content (text or images) in WYSIWYG editor, instead of searching for and inserting between HTML tags, or using a complex content management system.
4. WYSIWYG software runs on any windows computer.
5. you can also create background images on fly.
Disadvantages of using a WYSIWYG editor:
1. A WYSIWYG editor produces files of large sizes. The web page may take a bit longer to download.
2. The HTML code generated may not be compliant with existing web standards. Some of these editors are meant for web sites to be hosted with particular servers. Some WYSIWYG editors even produce files with their own extensions.
3. You need to fill in a lot of details, such as Meta tags and link colors for each page. Some WYSIWIG editors support CSS while editing and some don’t.
4. You need to preview the page in different browsers more often to see if the page is shaping up as you intended.
5. Web pages designed using WYSIWYG editors are rigid. They do not stretch if you put more text or images on a page. Instead they overlap on each other. Some WYSIWYG editors produce excessive div tags. It is difficult to edit these pages in an ordinary HTML editor.
6. Often these web pages are difficult to optimize for search engines.
I believe this article will help you in deciding the tools to use for your next website. If your site requires a huge database and pages need to produce dynamically, it is always better to opt for traditional programming methods. If your site is static, then a great looking template or using WYSIWYG editor will be a good option. Another factor you need to consider is SEO. If you want to rely on traffic from search engines, traditional HTML, CSS gives you the best results. If you can promote your site by spending huge amounts of money, you can go for flashier and visually stunning templates without much regard to SEO.
Template based web page development:
A lot of people get tempted by good looking web templates. Some template vendors even offer do-it-yourself kits to their customers. Web templates are designed by experts, using the latest designing software. They look stunning, compared to web pages developed by other means. While readymade templates offer several advantages, they have some disadvantages too.
Advantages of using templates:
1. You know how your finished site looks. You can choose the template that appeals to you. You need not rely on a web developer to get a good looking website.
2. Faster turnaround. You need not spend a lot of time on getting the colors and layout right. You can go straight to changing text and proceed with programming.
3. Templates are much cheaper than hiring a web developer. There are several sites that offer free templates as well.
4. Templates look much better than sites developed in traditional HTML programming. Templates are designed by professionals that are creative and competent and experienced.
5. Templates can be customized by anyone with basic HTML knowledge. You can customize the template yourself using a text editor.
Disadvantages of using templates:
1. You can get web templates for free or at a low-price. But these templates are not unique. Several people may have already bought or downloaded the template you have chosen. If you cant change the colors or layout a bit, your site looks like a clone of several sites. If you want a unique template design licensed only to you, you need to spend a fortune on it.
2. Often, templates don’t look good if you stretch them a bit. For example, if there is space for 100 words in a block and if you try to insert 200 words in that space, the template layout may change. And this may not look good. This puts limitations on text you can place in a template based web page, thereby restricting you from optimizing text or being descriptive about your business. It is well known that the more verbose in a page the more attention it gets from search engines. A template doesn’t come with Meta tags. You need to insert these meta tags.
3. Templates are good for static pages. If a site needs dynamic pages with a huge database to built, you need to opt for simpler templates.
4. If you are doing customization for yourself, always work on a copy of the template files. Templates are often done with simple HTML. But if you try to edit HTML tags instead of text between them, you might end up with bad page layout.
5. If there are template files with .tpl extension, locate the files where variables are defined. Then try to establish the logic behind the file system.
Using WYSIWYG editors:
Nowadays, several WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors are available for creating web pages. With these editors it is possible to create good looking pages simply by dragging and dropping objects on the page, without any HTML knowledge. They come with a lot of menu options. If you are familiar with windows objects or windows based software, you can create a web page in time.
Advantages of using a WYSIWYG editor:
1. It's great fun to create web pages this way. You can do it yourself, experimenting with colors and layouts. The web page is likely to be unique, unless you are trying to clone another web page. You can stretch your imagination.
2. It’s faster and easier to create web pages. You can make changes to a page layout by simply dragging the objects to their new positions.
3. You can make changes to content (text or images) in WYSIWYG editor, instead of searching for and inserting between HTML tags, or using a complex content management system.
4. WYSIWYG software runs on any windows computer.
5. you can also create background images on fly.
Disadvantages of using a WYSIWYG editor:
1. A WYSIWYG editor produces files of large sizes. The web page may take a bit longer to download.
2. The HTML code generated may not be compliant with existing web standards. Some of these editors are meant for web sites to be hosted with particular servers. Some WYSIWYG editors even produce files with their own extensions.
3. You need to fill in a lot of details, such as Meta tags and link colors for each page. Some WYSIWIG editors support CSS while editing and some don’t.
4. You need to preview the page in different browsers more often to see if the page is shaping up as you intended.
5. Web pages designed using WYSIWYG editors are rigid. They do not stretch if you put more text or images on a page. Instead they overlap on each other. Some WYSIWYG editors produce excessive div tags. It is difficult to edit these pages in an ordinary HTML editor.
6. Often these web pages are difficult to optimize for search engines.
I believe this article will help you in deciding the tools to use for your next website. If your site requires a huge database and pages need to produce dynamically, it is always better to opt for traditional programming methods. If your site is static, then a great looking template or using WYSIWYG editor will be a good option. Another factor you need to consider is SEO. If you want to rely on traffic from search engines, traditional HTML, CSS gives you the best results. If you can promote your site by spending huge amounts of money, you can go for flashier and visually stunning templates without much regard to SEO.
Website Designing - Looks vs. Works
Web developers with extensive graphic arts background often pay more attention to how a page looks than considering how visitors are going to find the page. The consideration on Usability and Business gets sidelined. On the other side of this issue, SEO consultants obsess about how much traffic it generates and how well a web site works. Sales and Business gets a front seat for them.
Designers want more 'pretty' graphics, but SEOs want lots of 'ugly' keyword-rich text, bullet lists, and text links. The more graphically complex the website the longer it will take to load.
To balance those Looks vs. Works, currently a web design company is in demand, which have an advanced knowledge on marketing, designing, programming as well as aesthetics. Designers having absolute control over the size and dimensions of all aspects with an eye on marketing are pitching to success. Today, fixed browser-friendly designs are more frequently chosen over the liquid designs.
There is a usability reason for why a designer may choose a more fixed layout. There is usually an optimal line width in terms of readability. There is a rule which tells that lines should be between 40-60 characters long, or approximately 11 words per line, though users can choose their windows size and font selection to optimize the factors which are important to them.
It becomes difficult sometimes to create a fixed layout which looks well and sells. Well, if the content is agreed upon, there is always a little difficulty in developing.
Storyboarding
To maintain an adorable balance between LOOKS and WORKS, the modern web gurus emphasize on storyboarding. Storyboarding covers the business, audience, purpose and the content. So the web designing is going to be more and more of calculative engineering than liberal art.
Storyboarding records description, purpose and title of each page in a given website. Then those elements are linked together according to the most effective and logical diagram patterns. It is like a prototype where there are options for feature enhancements and future improvements.
Audience Research
The key step in web designing/planning is defining the audience. They are the group of people who will visit your website – the market being targeted. Those people have a certain reason for visiting your site. And it is important for you to know what they are looking for. Technology and Eye-Candy designs come much later.
A clearly defined goal of the site and an understanding of what visitors want to do when they come to your site helps to pitch your message to identify the target audience. Upon considering who is most likely to use the content. There are some common factors a webmaster should take care. They are:
Audience Characteristics - Age, Language, Education
Information Preferences - Techies, Naive
Computer Skills - Beginners, Masters
Web Experience - Web builders, Web surfers, Lay-users
Designers want more 'pretty' graphics, but SEOs want lots of 'ugly' keyword-rich text, bullet lists, and text links. The more graphically complex the website the longer it will take to load.
To balance those Looks vs. Works, currently a web design company is in demand, which have an advanced knowledge on marketing, designing, programming as well as aesthetics. Designers having absolute control over the size and dimensions of all aspects with an eye on marketing are pitching to success. Today, fixed browser-friendly designs are more frequently chosen over the liquid designs.
There is a usability reason for why a designer may choose a more fixed layout. There is usually an optimal line width in terms of readability. There is a rule which tells that lines should be between 40-60 characters long, or approximately 11 words per line, though users can choose their windows size and font selection to optimize the factors which are important to them.
It becomes difficult sometimes to create a fixed layout which looks well and sells. Well, if the content is agreed upon, there is always a little difficulty in developing.
Storyboarding
To maintain an adorable balance between LOOKS and WORKS, the modern web gurus emphasize on storyboarding. Storyboarding covers the business, audience, purpose and the content. So the web designing is going to be more and more of calculative engineering than liberal art.
Storyboarding records description, purpose and title of each page in a given website. Then those elements are linked together according to the most effective and logical diagram patterns. It is like a prototype where there are options for feature enhancements and future improvements.
Audience Research
The key step in web designing/planning is defining the audience. They are the group of people who will visit your website – the market being targeted. Those people have a certain reason for visiting your site. And it is important for you to know what they are looking for. Technology and Eye-Candy designs come much later.
A clearly defined goal of the site and an understanding of what visitors want to do when they come to your site helps to pitch your message to identify the target audience. Upon considering who is most likely to use the content. There are some common factors a webmaster should take care. They are:
Audience Characteristics - Age, Language, Education
Information Preferences - Techies, Naive
Computer Skills - Beginners, Masters
Web Experience - Web builders, Web surfers, Lay-users
Designing a Search Engine Friendly Website
Ultimately, the Internet users are the people who are going to purchase your products and services, not the search engines. This is typically where the problem initially lies, because online visitors will not be able to find your Website if it is not constructed with both the visitors and the search engines in mind. Just because you may have spent thousands of dollars to have a beautifully designed Website, does not mean it will automatically generate lots of online visitors and become profitable.
In other words, a search engine friendly Website is first and foremost user-friendly, designed and written for your human visitors first (primary audience). Then the site can be tweaked so that is can be easily indexed by the search engines (secondary audience). The phrase "search engine friendly Website” means that the Website programmer is following the rules set forth by the search engines, in order for high keyword rankings to be achieved.
Here are a few highly effective strategies for designing a search engine friendly Website:
1. Keep HTML code and the Website simple and easy to navigate.
Try to create Websites that are basic .html or .htm page files, without using any type of JavaScript or other dynamic design styles. Javascript creates a lot of code between the header tags, pushing down the text that search engines would crawl first. Placing the script code in an external file reduces the code to just one line.
2. Reduce image sizes.
Too many images or very large images on your Web page will slow down the loading time of your Website. Make sure your images have a resolution of 72dpi. You can also slice large images into smaller pieces with your graphics editor.
3. Allow search engine spiders to find important Web pages from any page.
Place text links of your main Web pages at the bottom of each of your Web pages, so spiders can find your inside pages. Create a Site Map page with all of your Web pages listed on one page, and link to it from your homepage. You can also create a Google Sitemap .xml file using the Google Sitemaps program, so Google’s crawlers can find all of your Web pages easier.
4. Try not to use cookies on your Website.
Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in your Website not being indexed at all. Another thing that will stop search engines from finding the sub pages of your site is requiring cookies. Sure cookies and/or session ids may be necessary to track visitor activity, but you can make an exception for search engines. Search engine crawlers do not like cookies. Don't require them to accept them or they will simply leave.
5. Do not use frames anywhere on your Website.
This is an HTML tag created that allows designers to display two or more Web pages at the same time. The perception is that frames can improve Website navigation, but they are browser-dependant and do not create search engine friendly Websites. Most search engines do not index framed pages. Frames only allow search engine crawlers to see 1 Webpage, when there is actually 20 Web pages on a site.
6. Do not place your Website entirely in flash.
Search engines cannot “read” Websites built as Flash movies. They cannot read text in a movie file, and also only recognize a 20-page Website for example as only 1 Web page. It is best to create separate HTML page files for your photos, graphics and content, in order to have a search engine friendly Website.
7. Write content on each Web page.
Write a summary paragraph of at least 250 - 500 words of text for the top of each web page. Weave your keywords within this text being careful not have them so close together that your copy reads strange for your visitors. Aim to please the search engines as well as your Website visitors.
8. Do not create doorway pages.
Doorway, or gateway pages, means a "fake" Web page is created to rank well for a selected keyword term and redirects Website visitors to another, "actual" page on a company’s Website. Doorway pages are those generated automatically from a template and is considered spam and penalized by the majority of search engines.
In other words, a search engine friendly Website is first and foremost user-friendly, designed and written for your human visitors first (primary audience). Then the site can be tweaked so that is can be easily indexed by the search engines (secondary audience). The phrase "search engine friendly Website” means that the Website programmer is following the rules set forth by the search engines, in order for high keyword rankings to be achieved.
Here are a few highly effective strategies for designing a search engine friendly Website:
1. Keep HTML code and the Website simple and easy to navigate.
Try to create Websites that are basic .html or .htm page files, without using any type of JavaScript or other dynamic design styles. Javascript creates a lot of code between the header tags, pushing down the text that search engines would crawl first. Placing the script code in an external file reduces the code to just one line.
2. Reduce image sizes.
Too many images or very large images on your Web page will slow down the loading time of your Website. Make sure your images have a resolution of 72dpi. You can also slice large images into smaller pieces with your graphics editor.
3. Allow search engine spiders to find important Web pages from any page.
Place text links of your main Web pages at the bottom of each of your Web pages, so spiders can find your inside pages. Create a Site Map page with all of your Web pages listed on one page, and link to it from your homepage. You can also create a Google Sitemap .xml file using the Google Sitemaps program, so Google’s crawlers can find all of your Web pages easier.
4. Try not to use cookies on your Website.
Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in your Website not being indexed at all. Another thing that will stop search engines from finding the sub pages of your site is requiring cookies. Sure cookies and/or session ids may be necessary to track visitor activity, but you can make an exception for search engines. Search engine crawlers do not like cookies. Don't require them to accept them or they will simply leave.
5. Do not use frames anywhere on your Website.
This is an HTML tag created that allows designers to display two or more Web pages at the same time. The perception is that frames can improve Website navigation, but they are browser-dependant and do not create search engine friendly Websites. Most search engines do not index framed pages. Frames only allow search engine crawlers to see 1 Webpage, when there is actually 20 Web pages on a site.
6. Do not place your Website entirely in flash.
Search engines cannot “read” Websites built as Flash movies. They cannot read text in a movie file, and also only recognize a 20-page Website for example as only 1 Web page. It is best to create separate HTML page files for your photos, graphics and content, in order to have a search engine friendly Website.
7. Write content on each Web page.
Write a summary paragraph of at least 250 - 500 words of text for the top of each web page. Weave your keywords within this text being careful not have them so close together that your copy reads strange for your visitors. Aim to please the search engines as well as your Website visitors.
8. Do not create doorway pages.
Doorway, or gateway pages, means a "fake" Web page is created to rank well for a selected keyword term and redirects Website visitors to another, "actual" page on a company’s Website. Doorway pages are those generated automatically from a template and is considered spam and penalized by the majority of search engines.
Designing Websites That Appeal To The Senses
Taking Advantage of The Experience Factor
We read the newspaper, we watch television, and we listen to the radio, but we experience the Web; this is what makes 'The Website' one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today's marketing executives. Unfortunately conventional wisdom has stifled the 'experience factor' on most website presentations.
Traditional circulation based advertising biases and pitch-mandated direct mail practices from metric-minded agencies have limited businesses' ability to take advantage of the Web's capacity to provide a more active, creative, and penetrating sensory experience aimed at furthering marketing objectives.
As consumers of information we all filter what our mind considers irrelevant. When we go to a website we quickly recognize where banner and text advertisements have been placed and proceed to ignore them for the rest of our visit. Even television ads are becoming increasing less effective, even as their cost increases. Yet people will watch and even look forward to creative, entertaining advertisements that capture our imagination and inform our ability to make better decisions about what we buy and who we buy from.
Does Anybody Really Know What Works?
It is easy to rely on after-the-fact number crunching and projected head-numbing statistics to justify how marketing campaigns are constructed rather than on the less predictable but more relevant elements of psychology and human nature. But do numbers really tell the true story, or are they just protect-your-butt justification designed to ease everyone's mind when it comes time to commit to a budget?
Take the entertainment industry for example. Here is an industry that can tell you how many people watched a particular television show on a per minute basis. So if these and the other cerebral-cortex-boggling figures are so telling, why do networks have such a hard time delivering programs that people will watch; or do they yank new potentially successful shows off-the-air based on their initial numbers before they ever have a chance to find an audience?
Television is such an expensive medium, its practitioners have come to rely on seemly safe, tried, hackneyed old formula, knowing that it is easier to sell sponsors what used to work, even when they know there is little chance of it working again. The fact is nobody really knows what combination of stories, writers, actors and producers is going to capture the publics' imagination.
So what does this have to do with Web-marketing? Everything. The Web is not an expensive production medium and that allows marketers to experiment with different techniques and creative. Unless your Web-business is a circulation-based advertising model, there is no reason to limit your creative marketing to worn-out concepts and number-based incentive formats that for the most part, no longer work.
Sensory and Experience Design Concepts
The essence of good advertising and its big brother marketing, is creative story telling; stories presented effectively, inform, persuade, and penetrate our consciousness based on their ability to tap into our sensory experiences. There has developed over the last few years two new approaches to design that acknowledge this powerful aspect of human nature: Sensory and Experience Design.
The implications of Sensory and Experience Design can be found in everything from product development to package design. When we talk about SenEx Design we are talking about how real people react to their experience with products and marketing presentations.
We experience the world through our senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Stand in a supermarket and watch people shop for fruit and vegetables; they pick them up, squeeze them, turn them over and over looking for flaws, smell them, and if the store keeper isn't looking they may even have a taste. When people buy a car, they look at the specifications listed in the brochure, but they still go to the showroom, kick the tires, run their hands along the shinny new paint, smell the leather interior, and take that sucker for a test drive to see how she handles. It's all about experiencing the product through our senses - it's that sensory experience that becomes imbedded in our memory.
To date most companies have lagged in their efforts to implement these new SenEx marketing communication approaches on their websites due to their obsession with search engine optimization issues that focus on the volume of traffic rather than the quality of the marketing message. Business seems to be stuck in a circulation-based advertising and mass-market mindset that runs contrary to the Web's niche market 'Long Tail' nature and its ability to communicate by presenting information that appeals to a variety of senses.
Search Engine Optimization Issues
No one will argue with the desire of website owners to attract large numbers of viewers to their sites. But this desire has spawned an entire industry of people claiming to be able to provide website owners with the holy grail of search engine optimization: making it to the top spot in an organic search on your favorite search engine.
Not everyone willing to pay for an S.E.O. expert to optimize his or her site can be number one in an organic search. And of course there is the issue of paid search placement that trumps organic searches.
As fast as search engine optimization experts develop ways to beat the search engines, the experts at the search engines change their algorithms, and my money is on the guys at Google.
When it comes to search engine optimization consider the following important issues and questions:
1. Do the search engine tactics employed on your site degrade, obscure, or in some way diminish the ability of your website visitors to quickly find the information they want?
2. Do these search engine tactics impede your ability to effectively deliver your marketing message in a way that attracts attention, triggers relevant sensory experience, and embeds your message in your visitors' memories?
3. Do tactics like outbound reciprocal links and inline body-text links send people away from your site when you want them to stick around and hear what you have to say?
4. Do you have excessive repetitive copy-text on your site aimed at being indexed by search engines rather than read by people for clear concise understanding?
5. Have you reduced your complex message or instructions to a series of bulleted points that confuse rather than clarify?
6. Do your search engine tactics concentrate on the volume of traffic rather than the quality?
7. Is the traffic you're attracting leaving your site as fast as it's arriving?
The lesson we should learn from SenEx Design concepts is that websites need to be designed for people not search engines. Delivering a clearly understandable marketing message is achieved by tapping into the psychological and emotional responses triggered by sensory experiences. That is how you need to communicate to an audience separated from you by the vast expanse of the Internet.
SenEx Web Design Using Audio and Video Techniques
People are hungry for information. In today's fast-paced world the average person needs to constantly upgrade their knowledge of ever changing and more complex products and services. Things that were good for you yesterday today are harmful; products that don't exist today will exist tomorrow. So it doesn't matter if you are a homemaker, retiree, or a buyer for an international corporation, the need-to-know is constantly with us and it creates what Richard Saul Wurman has described as "Information Anxiety".
We just don't have the time to study everything we need-to-know or want-to-know that affects our business and personal lives. We need the information fast and in an easily digestible format. And we need that information presented in a way that will make it easy for us to retain it.
The power of Web-audio and video is their ability to illicit experiences by presenting information in a linear narrative that appeals to the senses of sound and sight. This ability attracts and focuses an audience's attention on the material you want highlighted; it presents that material in an easily digestible format; it clarifies the meaning and significance of critical details; and it penetrates viewers' consciousness so that the information is retained.
The following types of audio and video SenEx Web-presentations can be used to deliver a variety of material:
1. Web-commercials and Email Campaigns
2. Special Promotions and Product Offerings
3. Product Descriptions and Overviews
4. Testimonials and Reviews
5. How To Instructions and Tutorials
6. Frequently Asked Questions and Q&As
7. Expert Lectures, Analysis and Opinion
8. Background and History
9. Personality, Staff, and Business Profiles
Conclusion
We all have something we want to sell: a product, a service, a plan, an idea, or even ourselves. And anyone who has ever run a sales department will tell you the best way to sell is through human interaction and the best way to emulate that on a website is with Web-audio and video that uses Sensory and Experience Design techniques to deliver the message.
We read the newspaper, we watch television, and we listen to the radio, but we experience the Web; this is what makes 'The Website' one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today's marketing executives. Unfortunately conventional wisdom has stifled the 'experience factor' on most website presentations.
Traditional circulation based advertising biases and pitch-mandated direct mail practices from metric-minded agencies have limited businesses' ability to take advantage of the Web's capacity to provide a more active, creative, and penetrating sensory experience aimed at furthering marketing objectives.
As consumers of information we all filter what our mind considers irrelevant. When we go to a website we quickly recognize where banner and text advertisements have been placed and proceed to ignore them for the rest of our visit. Even television ads are becoming increasing less effective, even as their cost increases. Yet people will watch and even look forward to creative, entertaining advertisements that capture our imagination and inform our ability to make better decisions about what we buy and who we buy from.
Does Anybody Really Know What Works?
It is easy to rely on after-the-fact number crunching and projected head-numbing statistics to justify how marketing campaigns are constructed rather than on the less predictable but more relevant elements of psychology and human nature. But do numbers really tell the true story, or are they just protect-your-butt justification designed to ease everyone's mind when it comes time to commit to a budget?
Take the entertainment industry for example. Here is an industry that can tell you how many people watched a particular television show on a per minute basis. So if these and the other cerebral-cortex-boggling figures are so telling, why do networks have such a hard time delivering programs that people will watch; or do they yank new potentially successful shows off-the-air based on their initial numbers before they ever have a chance to find an audience?
Television is such an expensive medium, its practitioners have come to rely on seemly safe, tried, hackneyed old formula, knowing that it is easier to sell sponsors what used to work, even when they know there is little chance of it working again. The fact is nobody really knows what combination of stories, writers, actors and producers is going to capture the publics' imagination.
So what does this have to do with Web-marketing? Everything. The Web is not an expensive production medium and that allows marketers to experiment with different techniques and creative. Unless your Web-business is a circulation-based advertising model, there is no reason to limit your creative marketing to worn-out concepts and number-based incentive formats that for the most part, no longer work.
Sensory and Experience Design Concepts
The essence of good advertising and its big brother marketing, is creative story telling; stories presented effectively, inform, persuade, and penetrate our consciousness based on their ability to tap into our sensory experiences. There has developed over the last few years two new approaches to design that acknowledge this powerful aspect of human nature: Sensory and Experience Design.
The implications of Sensory and Experience Design can be found in everything from product development to package design. When we talk about SenEx Design we are talking about how real people react to their experience with products and marketing presentations.
We experience the world through our senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Stand in a supermarket and watch people shop for fruit and vegetables; they pick them up, squeeze them, turn them over and over looking for flaws, smell them, and if the store keeper isn't looking they may even have a taste. When people buy a car, they look at the specifications listed in the brochure, but they still go to the showroom, kick the tires, run their hands along the shinny new paint, smell the leather interior, and take that sucker for a test drive to see how she handles. It's all about experiencing the product through our senses - it's that sensory experience that becomes imbedded in our memory.
To date most companies have lagged in their efforts to implement these new SenEx marketing communication approaches on their websites due to their obsession with search engine optimization issues that focus on the volume of traffic rather than the quality of the marketing message. Business seems to be stuck in a circulation-based advertising and mass-market mindset that runs contrary to the Web's niche market 'Long Tail' nature and its ability to communicate by presenting information that appeals to a variety of senses.
Search Engine Optimization Issues
No one will argue with the desire of website owners to attract large numbers of viewers to their sites. But this desire has spawned an entire industry of people claiming to be able to provide website owners with the holy grail of search engine optimization: making it to the top spot in an organic search on your favorite search engine.
Not everyone willing to pay for an S.E.O. expert to optimize his or her site can be number one in an organic search. And of course there is the issue of paid search placement that trumps organic searches.
As fast as search engine optimization experts develop ways to beat the search engines, the experts at the search engines change their algorithms, and my money is on the guys at Google.
When it comes to search engine optimization consider the following important issues and questions:
1. Do the search engine tactics employed on your site degrade, obscure, or in some way diminish the ability of your website visitors to quickly find the information they want?
2. Do these search engine tactics impede your ability to effectively deliver your marketing message in a way that attracts attention, triggers relevant sensory experience, and embeds your message in your visitors' memories?
3. Do tactics like outbound reciprocal links and inline body-text links send people away from your site when you want them to stick around and hear what you have to say?
4. Do you have excessive repetitive copy-text on your site aimed at being indexed by search engines rather than read by people for clear concise understanding?
5. Have you reduced your complex message or instructions to a series of bulleted points that confuse rather than clarify?
6. Do your search engine tactics concentrate on the volume of traffic rather than the quality?
7. Is the traffic you're attracting leaving your site as fast as it's arriving?
The lesson we should learn from SenEx Design concepts is that websites need to be designed for people not search engines. Delivering a clearly understandable marketing message is achieved by tapping into the psychological and emotional responses triggered by sensory experiences. That is how you need to communicate to an audience separated from you by the vast expanse of the Internet.
SenEx Web Design Using Audio and Video Techniques
People are hungry for information. In today's fast-paced world the average person needs to constantly upgrade their knowledge of ever changing and more complex products and services. Things that were good for you yesterday today are harmful; products that don't exist today will exist tomorrow. So it doesn't matter if you are a homemaker, retiree, or a buyer for an international corporation, the need-to-know is constantly with us and it creates what Richard Saul Wurman has described as "Information Anxiety".
We just don't have the time to study everything we need-to-know or want-to-know that affects our business and personal lives. We need the information fast and in an easily digestible format. And we need that information presented in a way that will make it easy for us to retain it.
The power of Web-audio and video is their ability to illicit experiences by presenting information in a linear narrative that appeals to the senses of sound and sight. This ability attracts and focuses an audience's attention on the material you want highlighted; it presents that material in an easily digestible format; it clarifies the meaning and significance of critical details; and it penetrates viewers' consciousness so that the information is retained.
The following types of audio and video SenEx Web-presentations can be used to deliver a variety of material:
1. Web-commercials and Email Campaigns
2. Special Promotions and Product Offerings
3. Product Descriptions and Overviews
4. Testimonials and Reviews
5. How To Instructions and Tutorials
6. Frequently Asked Questions and Q&As
7. Expert Lectures, Analysis and Opinion
8. Background and History
9. Personality, Staff, and Business Profiles
Conclusion
We all have something we want to sell: a product, a service, a plan, an idea, or even ourselves. And anyone who has ever run a sales department will tell you the best way to sell is through human interaction and the best way to emulate that on a website is with Web-audio and video that uses Sensory and Experience Design techniques to deliver the message.
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